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THE B OWLER, 

WILLIAM CLARKE, 

The Slow Bowler and SeSy to the All England Eleven. 



THE 



CRICKET FIELD: 



ii^ HISTORY AND THE SCIENCE 



CRICKET. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 



v 



P. 



" THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC BATTING," 

" RECOLLECTIONS OF COLLEGE DAYS," 

ETC. ETC. 






Gaudet aprici gramme camp!. — IIor. 

» ^ "rf'Con^ 

1867 

BOSTON:'^ of Washing' 

MAYHEW & BAKER, 208 WASHINGTON STREET, 

18 5 9. 



■4 



GrV7"/7 



PREFACE 

TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



In nearly all the cricket manuals published in England, we 
find reference made to William Clarke, whose portrait we have 
copied from the English edition of " The Cricket Field," but can 
find no sketch of him. For the following we are indebted to 
William H. Bray, Esq., the Cricket Editor of " The New York 
Clipper :" " William Clarke was born at Nottingham, in 1798, 
and entered the cricketing arena at an early age, in which he 
was known as the « Slow Bowler of Notts/ He was one of the 
founders, I believe, of the All England Eleven, and was, for 
many years, and up to the time of his death, which occurred 
about a year since, their Secretary. He was not a very brilliant 
player, but his knowledge and management of the game rendered 
him eligible for any eleven. His slow bowling sometimes proved 
very destructive to the best batsmen." 

Boston, Sept. 22, 1859. 



UDebkatetr 



TO 



THE MEMBERS 



OF THE 



NORTH DEVON CRICKET CLUB, 



BY 



THEIR SINCERE FRIEND, 



THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE 



TO THE ENGLISH EDITION. 



The following pages are devoted to the history and the science 
of our National Game. Isaac Walton has added a charm to the 
Rod and Line ; Col. Hawker to the Dog and the Gun ; and Nim- 
rod and Harry Hieover to the " Hunting Field ; " but the 
u Cricket Field" is to this day untrodden ground. We have 
been long expecting to hear of some chronicler aided and abetted 
by $he noblemen and gentlemen of the Marylebone Club,— one 
who should combine, with all the resources of a ready writer, 
traditionary lore and practical experience. But time is fast 
thinning the ranks of the veterans. Lord Frederick Beauclerk 
and the once celebrated player, the Hon, Henry Tufton, after- 
wards Earl of Thanet, have passed away ; and probably Sparkes, 
of the Edinburgh Ground, and Mr, John Goldham, hereinafter 
mentioned, are the only surviving players who have witnessed 
both the formation and the jubilee of the Marylebone Club, fol- 
lowing as it has the fortunes of 'the Pavilion and of the enter- 
prising Thomas Lord, literally through "three removes" and 
" one fire," from White Conduit Fields to the present Lord's. 

How, then, it will be asked, do we presume to save from 
oblivion the records of Cricket ? 

As regards the antiquity of the game, our history is the result 

of patient researches in old English literature. As regards its 

changes and chances and the players of olden time, it fortunately 

happens that, some fifteen years ago, we furnished ourselves 
1* 



VI PREFACE, 

with old Nyren's account of the cricketers of his time and the 
Hambledon Club, and took Bentley's Book of Matches from 
1786 to 1825 to suggest questions and test the truth of answers, 
and passed many an interesting hour in Hampshire and Surrey 
by the peat fires of those villages which reared the Walkers, 
David Harris, Beldham, Wells, and nearly all of the All Eng- 
land players of fifty years since. Bennett, Harry Hampton, 
Beldham, and Sparkes, who first taught us to play, — all men of 
the last century, — have at various times contributed to our 
earlier annals ; while Thomas Beagley, for some days our land- 
lord, the late Mr. Ward, and especially Mr. E. H. Budd, often 
our antagonist in Lansdown matches, have respectively assisted 
in the first twenty years of the present century. 

But distinct mention must we make of one most important 
chronicler, whose recollections were coextensive with the whole 
history of the game in its matured and perfect form — William 
Pennex. And here we must thank our kind friend, the Rev. 
John Mitford, of Benhall, for his memoranda of many a winter's 
evening with that fine old player, — papers especially valuable 
because Fennex's impressions were so distinct, and his observa- 
tion so correct, that, added to his practical illustrations both 
with bat and ball, no other man could so truthfully enable us 
to compare ancient with modern times. Old Fennex, in his 
declining years, was hospitably appointed by Mr. Mitford to a 
sinecure office, created expressly in his honor, in the beautiful 
gardens of Benhall; and Pilch, and Box and Bailey, and all his 
old acquaintance, will not be surprised to hear that the old man 
would carefully water and roll his little cricket- ground on sum- 
mer mornings, and on wet and wintry days would sit in the 
chimney-corner, dealing over and over again by the hour, to an 
imaginary partner, a very dark and dingy pack of cards, and 
would then sally forth to teach a long-remembered lesson to 
some hob -nailed frequenter of the village ale-house. 

Some amateurs no doubt there are who could add or replace 



PREFACE. Vil 

many a link in our chain of history ; and, if they will kindly 
come forward, we will thankfully avail ourselves' of their assist- 
ance in future editions. By such collective information we 
may gradually build up a full and satisfactory history of our 
game. For the present we disdain not to offer our work to the 
lovers of Cricket as an outline to fill up, or as a series of pigeon- 
holes for general contributions. 

So much for the History : but why should we venture on the 
Science of the game ? 

Many may be excellently qualified, and have a fund of anec- 
dote and illustration, still not one of the many will venture on a 
book. Hundreds play without knowing principles ; many know 
what they cannot explain ; and some could explain, but fear the 
certain labor and cost, with the most uncertain return, of author- 
ship. For our own part, we have felt our way. The wide cir- 
culation of our " Recollections of College Days " and " Course 
of English Reading" promises a patient hearing on subjects 
within our proper sphere ; and that in this sphere lies Cricket, 
we may without vanity presume to assert. For, in August last, 
at Mr. Dark's Repository at Lord's, our little Treatise on the 
"Principles of Scientific Batting" (Slatter : Oxford, 1835) was 
singled out as "the book that contained as much on Cricket as 
all that had ever been written, and more besides." The same 
character we find given to it in Blaine's "Encyclopaedia of 
Rural Sports." That same day did we proceed to arrange with 
Messrs. Longman, naturally desirous to lead a second advance 
movement, as we led the first, and to break the spell which we 
had thus been assured, had, for fifteen years, chained down the* 
invention of literary cricketers at the identical point where we 
left off; for not a single rule or principle has yet been published 
in advance of our own; though more than one author has 
adopted (thinking, no doubt, the parents were dead) our ideas, 
and language too ! 

" Shall we ever make new books," asks Tristram Shandy, 



" as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of 
one vessel into another?" 

Common modesty should have suggested to such authors the 
example of gipsies, who, when they steal a horse, at least pay 
the owner the compliment of cropping the mane and tail. And, 
in this, no one will suspect us of making any allusion to Mr. 
Felix. "We could no more boast a resemblance to his book than 
to his play ; indeed, we both play left-handed, while we write 
"like other folk." "Great men have the same ideas," though 
we wrote first; and, if "the force of genius could no further 
go," and our sails first took the wind, who could help it ? And 
now we may run parallel without meeting, except — and we care 
not how often — in the cricket field ; for our respective designs 
are now wholly different. Mr. Felix attempts but a segment: 
we would comprehend the whole circle. He addresses the 
initiated: we bend to "the meanest capacity; steering, how- 
ever, a middle course, that the learner may not find us too deep? 
nor the learned too shallow. The plain and palatable is pro- 
vided for the young people, though a few things more highly 
seasoned appeared only a proper compliment to the old. 

Like solitary travellers from unknown lands, we are naturally 
desirous to offer some confirmation of statements, depending 
otherwise too much on our literary honor. We, happily, have 
received the following from — we believe the oldest player of 
the day that can be pronounced a good player still — Mr. E. H. 
Budd :— 

"I return the proof sheets of the History of my Cotemporaries, 
and can truly say that they do indeed remind me of old times. 
I find one thing only to correct, which I hope you will be in 
time to alter, for your accuracy will then, to the best of my 
belief, be wholly without exception : — write twenty guineas, and 
not twenty-five, as the sum offered, by old Thomas Lord, if any 
one should hit out of his ground where now is Dorset Square. 

"You invite me to note further particulars for your second 



edition : the only omission I can at present detect is this, — the 
name of Lord George Kerr, son of the Marquis of Lothian, 
should be added to your list of the Patrons of the Old Surrey 
Players ; for his lordship lived in the midst of them at Farnham, 
and I have often heard Beldham say, used to provide bread and 
cheese and beer for as many as would come out and practise on 
a summer's evening : this is too substantial a supporter of the 
Noble Game to be forgotten." 

We must not conclude without grateful acknowledgments to 
some distinguished amateurs representing the science both of 
the northern and the southern counties, who have kindly 
allowed us to compare notes on various points of play. In all 
of our instructions in batting, we have greatly benefited by the 
assistance, in the first instance, of Mr. A. Bass, of Burton, and 
his friend Mr. Whateley, a gentleman who truly understands 
"Philosophy in Sport." Then the Hon. Robert Grimston judi- 
ciously suggested some modification of our plan. "We agreed 
with him that, for a popular work, and one "for play hours," 
the lighter parts should prevail over the heavier, for, with most 
persons, a little science goes a long way, and, if made too 
weighty, our "winged words" might not fly far; seeing, as 
said Thucydides,* "men do find it such a bore to learn any 
thing that gives them trouble." For these reasons we drew 
more largely on our funds of anecdote and illustration, which 
had been greatly enriched by the contributions of a most valued 
correspondent Mr. E. S. E. Hartopp, and Mr. C. G. Merewether. 
Captain Cheslyn did our cause good service in other ways. 
When thus the science of batting had been reduced to its fair 
proportions, it was happily undertaken by the Hon. Frederick 
Ponsonby, not only through kindness to ourselves personally, 
but also, we feel assured, because he takes a pleasure in protect- 
ing the interests of the rising generation. By his advice we 

* B. i. c. 20. 



became more distinct in our explanations, and particularly care- 
ful of venturing on such refinements of science as, though sound 
in theory, may possibly produce errors in practice. 

" Tantce molis erat Cricetanum condere Campum." 

For our artist we have one word to say : we allude to the 
illustrations of attitudes. In vain did our artist assure us that 
a fore- shortened position would defy every attempt at ease, 
energy, or elegance ; and that, as a batsman looks better in any 
point of view than as seen by the bowler, no drawings from such 
a position could be satisfactory. Still, we were bound to insist 
on sacrificing, if necessary, the effect of the picture to its utility 
as an illustration. The figures, pp. 132 and 151 will prove how 
much more effective is a side view. Our principal design is to 
show the position of the feet and bat with regard to the wicket, 
and how every hit, with one exception, the Cut, is made by no 
other change of attitude than results from the movement of the 
left foot alone. 



J. P. 



Barnstaple, 
April 15th, 1851. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. I. 

Page 
Origin of the Game of Cricket 13 

CHAP. II. 
The General Character of Cricket 25 

chap. in. 

The Hambledon Club and the Old Players 41 

' CHAP. IY. 

Cricket generally established as a National Game by the end 
of the last Century 55 

CHAP. Y. 

The First Twenty Years of the present Century 78 

CHAP. Yl. 

A dark Chapter in the History of Cricket 92 

CHAP. YEI. 
The Science and Art of Batting 102 



Xll CONTENTS. 

Page 
CHAP. VIII. 

Hints against Slow Bowling , . „ . 162 

CHAP. IX. 
Bowling.— An Hour with " Old Clarke " 172 

CHAP. X. 
Hints on Fielding .. 183 

CHAP. XI. 
Chapter of Accidents. — Miscellaneous 204 



THE CEICKET FIELD. 



CHAPTER I. 

ORIGIN OF THE GAME OF CEICKET. 

The Game of Cricket, in some rude form, is undoubt- 
edly as old as the thirteenth century. But whether at 
that early date Cricket was the name it generally bore 
is quite another question. For Club-Ball we believe to 
be the name which usually stood for Cricket in the 
thirteenth century ; though, at the same time, we have 
some curious evidence that the term Cricket at that 
early period was also known. But the identity of the 
game with that now in use is the chief point ; the 
name is of secondary consideration. Games commonly 
change their names, and, as every schoolboy knows, 
bear different appellations in different places. 

Nevertheless, all previous writers acquiescing quietly 
in the opinion of Strutt, in his " Sports and Pastimes/' 
not only forget that Cricket may be older than its name, 
but erroneously suppose that the name of Cricket 
occurs in no author in the English language earlier 



14 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

than Thomas D'Urfey, who, in his Ci Pills to purge 
Melancholy," writes thus : — 

"Her was the prettiest fellow 
At foot-ball and at Cricket; 
At hunting chase or nimble race 
How featly her could prick it." 

The words " How featly " Strutt properly writes in 
place of a revolting old-fashioned oath in the original. 

Strutt, therefore, in these lines, quotes the word 
Cricket as first occurring in 1710. 

About the same date Pope wrote, — 

"The Judge to dance his brother Sergeants call, 
The Senators at Cricket urge the ball." 

And Duncome laying, curious to observe, the scene of 
a match near Canterbury, wrote, — 

"An ill-timed Cricket Match there did 
At Bishops-bourne befal." 

Soame Jenyns, also, early in the same century, wrote 
in lines that showed that cricket was very much of a 
" sporting " amusement : — 

"England, when once of peace and wealth possessed, 
Began to think frugality a jest ; 
So grew polite: hence all her well-bred heirs 
Gamesters and jockeys turned, and cricket-players." 

Ep. I. b. ii., init. 



ORIGIN OF THE GAME. 15 

However, we are happy to say that even among 
comparatively modern authors we have beaten Strutt 
in his researches by twenty-five years ; for Edward 
Phillips, John Milton's nephew, in his " Mysteries of 
Love and Eloquence," (8vo. 1685), writes thus : — 

"Wijl you not, when you have me, throw stocks at 
my head and cry, ' Would my eyes had been beaten 
out of my head with a cricket-hall the day before I saw 
thee?'" 

A late author has very sensibly remarked that the 
game could not have been popular in the days of 
Elizabeth, or we should expect to find allusions to 
cricket, as to tennis, football, and other sports, in the 
early poets ; but, he says, Shakspeare and the dramatists 
who followed are silent on the subject. 

The silence of the early poets and dramatists as to 
the game of cricket — and no one conversant with 
English literature would expect to find it except in 
some casual allusion or illustration in an old play — 
we can confirm on the best authority. It would seem 
bold to say that the early dramatists are, one and all, 
silent on the game of cricket. How bold a negative ! 
So rare are certain old plays that a hundred pounds 
have been paid by the Duke of Devonshire for a single 
play of a few loose and soiled leaves ; and shall we 
pretend to have dived among such hidden stores ? We 
are so fortunate ,as to be favored with the assistance of 
the Rev. John Milford and our loving cousin John 



16 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

Payne Collier, two English scholars, most deeply versed 
in early literature, and no bad judges of cricket ; and 
since these two scholars have never met with any 
mention of cricket in the early dramatists, nor in any 
author earlier than 1685, there is, indeed, much reason 
to believe that "Cricket" is a word that does not occur 
in any English author before 1685. 

But though not in any English author, does it occur 
in no document yet unpublished ? We shall see. 

Now as regards the silence of the early poets, a game 
like cricket might certainly exist without falling in with 
the descriptions or topics of those writers. But if we 
actually find distinct catalogues and enumerations of 
English games before the date of 1685, and cricket still 
omitted, the suspicion that cricket was not then the 
popular name of one of the many games of ball (not 
that the game was itself unknown) is strongly con- 
firmed. 

Three such catalogues do occur ; one in the " Anat-. 
omy of Melancholy," a second in a well-known treatise 
of James L, and a third in the " Cotswold Games." 

For the first catalogue, Strutt reminds us of the set 
of rules from the hand of James I. for the " nurture and 
conduct of an heir-apparent to the throne," addressed 
to his eldest son, Henry Prince of Wales, called the 
BA2IAIKON J SIP ON, or a " Kinge's Christian Dutie 
towards God." Herein the king forbids gaming and 
rough play : " As to diceing, I think it become th best 



ORIGIN OF THE GAME. 17 

deboshed souldiers to play on the heads of their drums. 
As to the foote-ball, it is meeter for laming than making 
able the users thereof." But a special commendation 
is given to certain games of ball ; " playing at the catch 
or tennis, palle-malle, and such like other fair and 
pleasant field-games." Certainly cricket may have been 
included under the last general expression, though by 
no means a fashionable game in James's reign. 

For the second catalogue of games, Burton, in his 
11 Anatomy of Melancholy," " the only book," said Dr. 
Johnson, " that ever took me out of bed two hours 
sooner than I wished to rise," — gives a view of the 
sports most prevalent in the seventeenth century. 
Here we have a very full enumeration : it specifies the 
pastimes of " great men," and those of " base, inferior 
persons ;" it mentions " the rocks on which men lose 
themselves" by gambling; how "wealth runs away 
with" their hounds, and their fortunes fly away with 
their hawks." Then follow " the sights and shows of 
the Londoners," and the " May-games and recreations 
of the country folk." More minutely still, Burton 
speaks of rope-dancers, cock-fights, and other sports 
common both to town and country ; and though he is 
so exact as to specify all " winter recreations" separ- 
ately, and mentions " foot-balls and ballowns," and 
says, " Let the common people play at ball and barley- 
brakes," still is there, in all this catalogue, no mention 
of cricket, 

2* 



18 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

As a third catalogue we have the " Cots wold Games," 
but cricket is not among them. This was an annual 
celebration which one Captain Dover, by express 
permission and command of James I., held on the 
Cotswold Hills, in Gloucestershire. 

Fourthly : cricket is not mentioned in " The 
Compleat Gamester," published by Charles Browne, 
in 1709. 

But we have a catalogue of games about the same 
date, in Stow's " Survey of London," there cricket is 
mentioned ; but, remarkably enough, it is particularized 
as one of the amusements of " the lower classes." 
The whole passage is curious : — 

" The modern sports of the citizens, besides drink- 
ing (!), are cock-fighting, bowling upon greens, back- 
gammon, cards, dice, billiards, also musical entertain- 
ments, dancing, masks, balls, stage-plays, and club- 
meetings in the evening ; they sometimes ride out on 
horseback, and hunt with the lord mayor's pack of dogs^, 
when the common hunt goes on. The lower classes 
divert themselves at foot-ball, wrestling, cudgels, nine- 
pins, shovel - board, cricket, stow - ball, ringing of 
bells, quoits, pitching the bar, bull and bear baitings, 
throwing at cocks, and lying at ale-houses." (!) 

The mention of one thing is the negation of the 
other, say the lawyers; and this rule of evidence 
certainly applies to an omission from three distinct 
catalogues, and the conclusion that cricket was unknown 



ORIGIN OF THE GAME. 19 

when those lists were made would appear inevitable, 
were it not that in this case the argument would prove 
too much ; for it would equally prove that club-ball 
and trap-ball were undiscovered too ; whereas both 
these games are as old as the thirteenth century. 

The conclusion of all this is, that the oft-repeated 
assertions that cricket is a game no older than the 
eighteenth century is erroneous ; for, first, the game 
itself may be much older than the name by which we 
know it; and, secondly, the "silence of antiquity" is 
no conclusive evidence that even the name, Cricket, 
was really unknown. 

Thus do we refute those who assert a negative as to 
the antiquity of cricket. Next, for our affirmative, we 
will show — 

First, that the game of single-wicket was played 
as early as the thirteenth century, under the name of 
Club-ball. 

Secondly, that it might have been played at the same 
time as " Handyn and Handoute." 

Thirdly, that the genuine double-wicket game was 
played in Scotland about 1700, under the name of 
" Cat and Dog." 

Fourthly, that " Creag," — very near " Cricce," the 
Saxon term for the crooked stick, or bandy, which we 
see in the old pictures of cricket, — was the name of a 
game played in the year 1300. 

First, as to a single-wicket game in the thirteenth 



20 THE CKICKET FIELD. 

century, whatever the name of the said game migut 
have been, we are quite satisfied with the following 
proof : — 

" In the Bodleian Library at Oxford," says Strutt, 
"is a MS. (No. 264,) dated 1344, which represents a 
figure, a female, in the act of bowling a ball (of the 
size of a modern cricket-ball) to a man who elevates a 
straight bat to strike it ; behind the bowler are several 
figures, male and female, waiting to stop or catch the 
ball, their attitudes grotesquely eager for a ' chance.' 
The game is called club-ball, but the score is made by 
hitting and running, as in cricket." 

Secondly, Barrington, in his remarks on the more 
ancient statutes, comments on 17 Edw. IV. a. d. 1477, 
thus : — 

"The. disciplined soldiers were not only guilty of 
pilfering on their return, but also of the vice of gaming. 
The third chapter therefore forbids playing at cloish, 
ragle, half-bowle, quekebord, handyn and handoute. 
Whosoever shall permit these games to be played in 
their house or yard is punishable with three years' 
imprisonment ; those who play at any of the said games 
are to be fined 10Z., or lie in jail two years. 

"This," says Barrington, " is the most severe law 
ever made in any country against gaming, and some of 
those forbidden seem to have been manly exercises, 
particularly the handyn and handoute, which I should 
suppose to be a kind of cricket, as the term hands is 
still (writing in 1740) retained in that game." 



OKIGIN OF THE GAME. 21 

: Thirdly, as to the double- wicket game, Dr. Jamieson, 
in his Dictionary, published in 1722, gives the follow- 
ing account of a game played in Angus and Lothian : — 

" This is a game for three players at least, who are 
furnished with clubs. They cut out two holes, each 
about a foot in diameter and seven inches in depth, and 
twenty-six feet apart ; one man guards each hole with 
his club ; these clubs are called Dogs. A piece of 
wood, about four inches long and one inch in diameter, 
called a cat, is pitched, by a third person, from one 
hole towards the player at the other, who is to prevent 
the cat from getting into the hole. If it pitches in the 
hole, the party who threw it takes his turn with the 
club. If the cat be struck, the club-bearers change 
places, and each change of place counts one to the 
score, like club ball J 9 

The last observation shows that in the game of club- 
ball above-mentioned, the score was made by " runs," 
as in cricket. 

In what respect, then, do these games differ from 
cricket, as played now ? The only exception that can 
be taken is to the absence of any wicket. But every 
one familiar with a paper given by Mr. Ward, and 
published in " Old Nyren," by the talented Mr. C. 
Cowden Clarke, — a friend of Charles Lamb, and his 
style has a genuine savour of " Elia," — will remember 
that the traditionary " blockhole " was a veritable hole 
in former times, and that the batsman was made out in 



22 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

running, not, as now, but putting down a wicket, but 
by popping the ball into the bole before the bat was 
grounded in it, The same paper represents that the 
wicket was two feet wide, — a width which is only 
rendered credible by the fact that the said hole was not 
like our mark for guard, four feet distant from the 
stumps, but between them ; an arrangement which 
would require space for the frequent struggle of the 
batsman and wicket-keeper, as to who should reach the 
blockhole first. 

The conclusion of all is, that cricket is identical with 
club-ball, — a game played in the thirteenth century as 
single- wicket, and played, if not then, later as a double- 
wicket game ; that where balls were scarce, a Cat, or 
bit of wood, as seen in many a village, supplied its 
place ; also that handyn a*nd handoute was probably 
another name. Fosbroke, in his Dictionary of Anti- 
quities, said " club-ball was the ancestor of cricket : " 
he might have said, " club-ball was the old name for 
cricket, the games being the same." 

The points of difference are not greater than every 
cricketer can show between the game as now played 
and that of the last century. 

But, lastly, as to the name of cricket. The bat, 
which is now straight, is represented in old pictures as 
crooked, and " cricce " is the simple Saxon word for a 
crooked stick. The derivation of billiards from the 
Norman billart, a cue, or from ball-yard, according to 
Johnson, also ninepins and trapball, are obvious 



OKIGIN OF THE GAME. 23 

instances of games which derived their names from 
the implements with which they are played. Now it 
appears highly probable, that when a wicket to be 
bowled down by a rolling ball superseded the blockhole 
to be pitched into, that the club best suited for a pitch 
should have given way to the bandy or crooked bat of 
the last century ; and, if so, the game, which first was 
named from the club " club-ball," should afterwards 
be named from the crooked stick " cricket." 

Add to which the game might have been played in 
two ways, — sometimes more in the form of club-ball, 
sometimes more like cricket ; and the following remark- 
able passage proves that a term very similar to cricket 
was applied to some game as far back as the thirteenth 
century, the identical date to which we have traced 
that form of cricket called club-ball and the game of 
handyn and handoute. 

From the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lviii. p. 1., 
a. d. 1788, we extract the following : — 

" In the wardrobe account of the 28th year of King 
Edward the First, a. d. 1300, published in 1787 by 
the Society of Antiquaries, among the entries of money 
paid his chaplain, one Mr. John Leek, for the use of 
his son Prince Edward in playing at different games, is 
the following : — 

'•' ' Domino Johanni de Leek, capellano Domini 
Edwardi fil' ad Oreag' et alios ludos per vices, per 
manus proprias, 100 s. Apud Westm. 10 die Aprilis, 
1305.'" 



24 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

The writer observes, that the glossaries have been 
searched in vain for any other name of a pastime but 
cricket to which the term Creag' can apply. 

Creag' and cricket, therefore, being presumed iden- 
tical, the cricketers of Warwick and of Gloucester may 
be reminded that they are playing the same game as 
was played by the dauntless enemy of Robert Bruce, 
afterwards the prisoner at Kenilworth, and lastly the 
victim of Mortimer's ruffians in the dark tragedy of 
Berkeley Castle. 

The same game in later times, we know, has been 
the pastime and discipline of many an English soldier. 
Our barracks are now provided with cricket grounds ; 
every regiment and every man-of-war has its club ; and 
our soldiers and sailors astonish the natives of every 
clime, both inland and maritime, with a specimen of a 
British game : and it deserves to be better known that 
it was at a cricket match that " some of our officers 
were amusing themselves on the 12th June, 1815," 
says Captain Gordon, "in company with that devoted 
cricketer, the Duke of Richmond, when the Duke of 
Wellington arrived, and shortly after came the Prince 
of Orange, which of course put a stop to our game. 
Though the hero of the Peninsula was not apt to let 
his movements be known, on this occasion he made 
no secret that, if he were attacked from the south, 
Halle would be his position, and, if on the Namur side, 
Waterloo.' ' 



25 



CHAP. II. 

THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF CRICKET. 

The game of cricket, philosophically considered, is a 
standing panegyric on the English character ; none 
but an orderly and sensible race of people would so 
amuse themselves. It calls into requisition all the 
cardinal virtues, some moralist would say. As with 
the Grecian games of old, the player must be sober and 
temperate. Patience, fortitude, and self-denial, the 
various bumps of order, obedience, and good humour, 
with an unruffled temper, are indispensable. For 
intellectual virtues we want judgment, decision, and 
the organ of concentrativeness — every faculty in the 
free use of all its limbs — and every idea in constant 
air and exercise. Poor, rickety, and stunted wits will 
never serve : the widest shoulders are of little use 
without a head upon them : the cricketer wants wits 
down to his fingers' ends. As to physical qualifi- 
cations, we require not only the volatile spirits of the 
Irishman Rampant, nor the phlegmatic caution of the 
Scotchman Couchant, but we want the English combi- 
nation of the two ; though, with good generalship* 



26 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

cricket is a game for Britons generally : the three 
nations would mix not better in a regiment than an 
eleven ; especially if the Hibernian were trained in 
London, and taught to enjoy something better than 
what has been termed his supreme felicity, " Otium 
cum dig-gin- taties." From the southern and south- 
eastern counties of England the game spread — not a 
little owing to the Propaganda of the metropolitan 
clubs, which played chiefly first at the Artillery Ground, 
then at White Conduit Fields, and lastly at Lord's, 
as well as latterly at the Oval, Kennington, and on all 
sides of London — through all the southern half of 
England ; and during these last twenty years the 
northern counties, and even Edinburgh, have sent forth 
distinguished players. But considering that the com- 
plement of the game is twenty-two men, besides two 
umpires and two scorers ; and considering also that 
cricket, unlike every other manly contest, by flood or 
field, occupies commonly more than one day ; the 
railways, as might be expected, have tended wonder- 
fully to the diffusion of cricket, — giving rise to clubs 
depending on a circle of some thirty or forty miles, as 
also to that club in particular under the canonized 
saint, John Zingari, into whom are supposed to have 
migrated all the erratic spirits of the gipsy tribe. The 
Zingari are a race of ubiquitous cricketers, exclusively 
gentlemen-players ; for cricket affords to a race of 
professionals a merry and abundant, though rather a 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF CRICKET. 27 

laborious livelihood, from the time that the May-fly is 
up to the time the first pheasant is down. Neither 
must we forget the All England Eleven, who, under 
the generalship of Mr. Clarke of Nottingham, play 
numbers varying from sixteen to twenty- two in almost 
every country in England ; and so proud are the clubs 
of the honour that, besides a subscription of some 70Z., 
and part or all of the money at the field-gate, being* 
willingly accorded for their services, much hospitality 
is exercised wherever they go. This tends to a healthy 
circulation of the life's blood of cricket, vaccinating 
and inoculating every wondering rustic with the princi- 
ples of the national game. Our soldiers, we said, by 
order of the Horse Guards, are provided with cricket- 
grounds adjoining their barracks ; and all of her 
Majesty's ships have bats and balls to astonish the 
cockroaches at sea, and the crabs and turtles ashore. 
Hence it has come to pass that, wherever her Majesty's 
servants have " carried their victorious arms " and 
legs, wind and weather permitting, cricket has been 
played. Still the game is essentially Anglo-Saxon. 
Foreigners have rarely, very rarely, imitated us. The 
English settlers and residents everywhere play ; but of 
no single cricket club have we ever heard dieted either 
with frogs, sour crout, or macaroni. But how remark- 
able that cricket is not naturalized in Ireland ! the fact 
is very striking that it follows the course rather of ale 
than whiskey. Witness Kent, the land of hops, and 



28 THE CBICKET FIELD. 

the annual antagonists of "All England." Secondly, 
Parnham, which, as we shall presently show, with its 
adjoining parishes, nurtured the finest of the old 
players, as well as the finest hops, — cundbula Trojce, 
the infant school of cricketers. Witness also the 
Burton Clubs, assisted by our excellent friend next 
akin to bitter ale. Witness again Alton ale, on which 
old Beagley throve so well, and the Scotch ale of 
Edinburgh, on which John Sparkes, though commenc- 
ing with the last generation, has carried on his instruc- 
tions, in which we ourselves once rejoiced, into the 
middle of the present century. The mountain mists 
and " mountain dew " suit better with deer stalking 
than with cricket : our game disdains the Dutch cour- 
age of ardent spirits. The brain must glow with 
nature's fire, and not depend upon a spirit lamp. 
Mens sana in corpore sano : feed the body, but do not 
cloud the mind. You, sir, with the hectic flush, the 
fire of your eyes burnt low in their sockets, with beak 
as sharp as a woodcock's from living upon suction, 
with pallid face and shaky hand, — our game disdains 
such ghostlike votaries. Rise with the lark and scent 
the morning air, and drink from the bubbling rill, and 
then, when your veins are no longer fevered with 
alcohol, nor puffed with tobacco smoke, — when you 
have rectified your illicit spirits and clarified your un- 
settled judgment, — "come again and devour up my 
discourse." And you, sir, with the figure of Falstaff 



GENERAL CHARACTER OE CRICKET. 29 

and the nose of Bardolf, — not Christianly eating that 
you may live, but living that you may eat, — -one of the 
nati consumere fruges, the devouring caterpillar and 
grub of human kind : our noble game has no sympathy 
with gluttony, still less with the habitual " diner-out," 
on whom outraged nature has taken vengeance, by 
emblazoning what was his face (minium ne crede colori,) 
encasing each limb in fat, and condemning him to be 
his own porter to the end of his days. " Then I am 
your man — and I — and I," cry a crowd of self-satisfied 
youths ; " sound are we in wind and limb, and none 
have quicker hand or eye." Gently, my friends, so 
far well ; good hands and eyes are instruments indis- 
pensable, but only instruments. There is a wide differ- 
ence between a good workman and a bag of tools, 
however sharp. We must have head as well as hands- 
You may be big enough and strong enough, but the 
question is whether, as Virgil says, 

" Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus 
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet," 

And in these lines Virgil truly describes the right sort 

of man for a cricketer: plenty of life in him: not 

barely soul enough, as Robert South said, to keep his 

body from putrefaction ; but, however large his stature, 

though he weigh twenty stone, like (we will not say 

Mr. Mynn),,but an olden wicket-keeper, named Burt, 

or a certain infant genius in the same line, of good 
3* 



30 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

Cambridge town, — he must, like these worthies afore- 
said, have nous in perfection, and be instinct with 
sense all over. Then, says Virgil, igneus est ollis vigor ; 
" they must always have the steam up," otherwise the 
bard would have agreed with us, they are no good in 
an Eleven, because— 

" Noxia corpora tardant 
Terrenique hebetant artus, moribundaque membra ; " 

that is, you must suspend the laws of gravitation before 
they can stir, — dull clods of the valley, and so many 
stone of carrion ; and then Virgil proceeds to describe 
the discipline to render those who suffer the penalties 
of idleness or intemperance fit to join the chosen few in 
the cricket-field : 

" Exinde per amplum 
Mittimur Elysium et pauci Iceta arva tenemus," 

Superfluous were it to make any apology for classi- 
cal quotations ; above all when the English is ap- 
pended. At the Universities, cricket and scholarship 
very generally go together. When, in 1836, we 
played victoriously on the side of Oxford against Cam- 
bridge, seven out of our eleven were classmen, and it is 
doubtless only to avoid an invidious distinction that 
" Heads v. Heels," as was once suggested, has failed to 
be an annual University match ; the seri studiorum 
— those put to school late — would not have a chance. 
From all this we argue that, on the authority of 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF CRICKET. 31 

ancient and the experience of modern times, cricket 
was mind as well as matter, and, in every sense of trie 
word, a good understanding. How is it that Clarke's 
slow bowling is so successful ? Ask Bayley or Calde- 
court ; or say Bayley's own bowling, or that of Lilly- 
white, or others not much indebted to pace. " You 
see, sir, they bowl with their heads." Then only is 
the game worthy the notice of full-grown men. "A 
rubber of whist," says the author of the " Diary of a 
•Late Physician," in his " Law Studies," " calls into 
requisition all those powers of mind that a barrister 
most needs ; " and nearly as much may be said of a 
• scientific game of cricket. Mark that first-rate bowler ; 
the batsman is hankering for his favorite cut — no — leg 
stump is attacked again — extra man on leg side — right 
— that's the spot — leg stump, and not too near him. 
He is screwed up, and cannot cut away ; Point has it 
— persevere — -try again — his patience soon will fail. 
Ah, look at that ball ; the bat was more out of the 
perpendicular — now the bowler alters his pace — good. 
A dropping ball — over-reached and all but a mistake ; 
now a slower pace still, with extra twist — hits furiously 
to leg, too soon. Leg-stump is grazed, and bail off. 
«' You see, sir," says the veteran, turning round, " a 
man has no room to cut from leg-stump — is more apt 
to hit across from leg-stump — is often caught from leg- 
stump ; even " leg before wicket " comes from leg- 
stump — gets off his ground from leg-stump, and cannot 



32 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

stop so readily from leg-stump — so keep on at leg- 
stump with an imperfect player. It wants a very long- 
headed player ; aye, and one of steady habits, the result 
of long experience in all the chances of the game, to 
remain steady ball after ball. An old player, who 
knows what is and what is not on the ball, alone 
can resist all the temptations that leg-balls involve. 
Young players are going their round of experiments, 
and are too fond of admiration and brilliant hits ; where- 
as it is your upright straight players that worry a* 
bowler — twenty-two inches of wood, by four and a 
quarter — every inch of them before the stumps, hitting 
or blocking, is ra-ther disheartening ; but the moment 
a man makes ready for a leg hit, the bat points to Slip 
instead of to bails, and only about five inches -by four 
of wood can cover the wicket ; so leg-hitting is the 
bowler's chance : cutting also for a similar reason. If 
there were no such thing as leg-hitting, we should see 
a full bat every time, the man steady on his legs, and 
only one thing to think of; and what a task a bowler 
would have. That was Mr. Ward's play — good for 
something to the last. First-rate straight play and 
free leg-hitting seldom last long together: when once 
exulting in the luxurious excitement of a leg-volley, 
the muscles are always on the quiver to swipe round, 
and the bowler sees the bat raised more and more 
across wicket. So, also, it is with men who are yearn- 
ing for a cut — forming for the cut like forming for leg- 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF CRICKET. 33 

hit, aye, and almost the idea of those hits coming 
across the mind, set the muscles off straight play, and , 
give the bowler a chance. There is a deal of head- 
work in bowling: once make your batsman set his 
mind on one hit, and give him a ball requiring the con- 
trary, and he is off his guard in a moment.' ' 

" Lilly white," said a first-rate Cambridge mathe- 
matician and cricketer who knew him well, " has a 
mind that would have made him eminent in many posi- 
tions in life. The game, when he plays it, is very 
often the bowler's head and hands against the batman's 
hands alone. Of course, the old professional players 
at last have learnt all his manoeuvres : but then it is 
no small praise to him that they have had to learn it ; 
and he has raised the standard of batting, and remained 
a first-rate bowler nearly half a century. It will easily 
be understood, therefore, that there is something 
highly intellectual in our noble and national pastime. 
But the cricketer must possess certain qualifications, not 
only physical and intellectual, but moral qualifications 
also ; but of what avail is the mind to design, and the 
hand to execute, if a sulky temper paralyzes his exer- 
tions, and throws a damp upon the field ; or if impa- 
tience dethrones judgment, and the man hits across at 
good balls, because loose balls are long in coming ; or, 
again, if a contentious and imperious disposition leaves 
the cricketer all ' alone in his glory,' voted the pest of 
every eleven." 



34 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

The pest of the hunting-field is the man always 
•thinking of his own horse and own riding, galloping 
against men and not after dogs. The pest of the 
cricket-field is the man who bores you about his aver- 
age — his wickets — his catches ; and looks blue, even 
at the success of his own party. If unsuccessful in 
batting or fielding, he " shuts up " — " the wretch con- 
centred all in self." No ! Give me the man who for- 
gets himself in the game, and, missing a ball, does not 
stop to exculpate himself by dumb show, but rattles 
away after it — who does not blame his partner when 
he is run out — who plays like play, and not like earn- 
est — who can say good-humoredly, " runs enough I 
hope without mine." If such a man makes a score, 
players remark on all sides, " Our friend deserves luck 
for his good-humor and true spirit of the game." 

Add to all this, perseverance and self-denial, and a 
soul above vain glory and the applause of the vulgar. 
Aye, perseverance in well-doing, — perseverance in a 
straight-forward, upright and consistent course of ac- 
tion. — See that player practising apart from the rest. 
What an unpretending style of play — a hundred pounds 
appears to depend on every ball — not a hit for these 
five minutes — see, he has a shilling on his stumps, and 
Hillyer is doing his best to knock it off. A question 
asked after every ball, the bowler being constantly in- 
vited to remind him of the least inaccuracy in hitting 
or danger in defence. The other players are hitting all 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF CRICKET. 35 

over the field, making every one (but a good judge) 
marvel. Our friend's reward is that in the first good 
match, when some supposed brilliant Mr. Dashwood 
has been stumped from leg ball — (he cannot make his 
fine hits in his ground) — bowled by a shooter or 
caught by that sharpest of all Points, "Jval avdgwv 
see our persevering friend — ball after ball dropping 
harmless from his bat, till ever and anon a single or a 
double are safely played away — two figures are ap- 
pended to his name ; and Caldecourfc, as he puts the 
bails on, remarks, " We' ve some good cricket this 
morning, gentlemen." 

Conceit in a cricketer, as in other things, is a bar to 
all improvement — the vain-glorious is always thinking 
of the lookers-on instead of the game, and generally is 
condemned to live on the reputation of one skying leg- 
hit, or some twenty runs off three or four overs (his 
merriest life is a short one) for half a season. 

In one word, there is no game in which amiability 
and an unruffled temper is so essential to success, or 
in which virtue is rewarded half as much as in the 
game of cricket. Dishonest or shuffling ways cannot 
prosper ; the umpires will foil every such attempt — 
those truly constitutional judges, bound by a code of 
written laws — and the public opinion of a cricket club, 
militates against his preferment. For cricket is a 
social game. Could a cricketer play a solo, or with a 
dummy (other than the catapult), he might play in 
humor or out of humor ; but an Eleven is of the nature 



36 THE CRICKET FIELD 

of those commonwealths of which Cicero said, that 
without some regard to the cardinal virtues, they could 
not possibly hold together. 

The game of cricket — would that all men would re- 
member ! — -is' truly a game — a recreation; so away with 
pettish words and sombre looks. " If it's play, why 
look so serious and unhappy ? " said a lady once in our 
hearing ; and added, with that fine discernment in 
which ladies so much excel, " cricket never appears to 
me so honestly a game of play as when Mr. Charles 
Taylor holds the bat — every movement is so easy, the 
whole field is made alive, and his style and appearance 
so joyous." 

Cricket is not solely a game of skill — chance has 
sway enough to leave the vanquished an if and a hut. 
A long innings bespeaks good play ; but " out the 
first ball " is no disgrace. A game, to be really a 
game, really playful, should admit of chance as well as 
skill. It is the bane of chess that its character is too 
severe. — to lose its games is to lose your character ; 
and, most painful of all, to be outwitted in a fair and 
undeniable contest of long-headedness, tact, manoeuv- 
ring, and common sense — qualities in which no man 
likes to come off second best. There stand the same 
mechanical pieces alike for both: the sole difference 
consists in the mind of the player. Hence the restless 
nights and unforgiving state of mind that has so often 
followed one checkmate. Hence that " agony of rage 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF CRICKET. 37 

and disappointment from which," said Sydney Smith, 

14 the Bishop of broke my head with a chess-board 

fifty years ago at college." 

But did we say that ladies, famed as some have been 
in the hunting-field, know anything of cricket too ? 
Not often ; though I could have mentioned two, — the 
wife and daughter of the late William Ward, all 
three now no more, who could tell you, — the daughter 
especially — the forte and the failing of every player at 
Lord's. I accompanied them home one evening to see 
some records of the game, to their humble abode in 
Connaught Terrace, where many an ornament reminded 
me of the former magnificence of the Member for the 
City, the Bank Director, and the great Russia merchant, 
when in his mansion in the then not unfashionable 
Bloomsbury Square, the banqueting room of which 
many a Wykehamist has cause to remember ; for when 
famed, as they were, for the quickest and best of field- 
ing, the Wykehamists had won their annual match at 
Lord's, and twenty years since they but rarely lost, Mr. 
Ward would bear away triumphantly the winners to end 
the dry with him. But talking of the ladies, to say 
nothing of Miss Wills, who invented over-hand bowling, 
their natural powers of criticism, if honestly consulted, 
would, we think, tell some home truths to a certain 
class of players who seem to forget that to be a cricketer 
he must be still a man ; and that a manly, graceful style 
of play is worth something, independently of effect on 
4 



38 THE CKICKET FIELD. 

the score. Take the case of the Skating Club. Will 
they elect a man because, in spite of arms and legs cen- 
trifugally flying, he can do some tricks of a posture-mas- 
ter, however wonderful ? No ! elegance in simple move- 
ments is the first thing : without elegance nothing counts. 
And so should it be with cricket. I have seen men, ac- 
counted players, quite as bad as some of the cricketers 
in Mr. Pips's diary. " Pray, Lovell," I once heard, 
"have I the right guard?" " Guard indeed! Yes! 
keep on looking as ugly and as awkward as you are now, 
and no man in England can bowl for fright ! " Apropos, 
one of the first hints in archery is, " don't make faces 
when you pull your bow." Now we do seriously 
entreat those young ladies into whose hands this book 
may fall to profess, on our authority, that they are 
judges of the game as far as appearance goes ; and also 
that they will quiz, banter, tease, lecture, never-leave- 
alone, and otherwise plague and worry all such brothers 
or husbands as they shall see enacting these anatomical 
contortions, which too often disgrace the game of 
cricket. 

Cricket, we said, is a game chiefly of skill, but partly 
of chance. Skill avails enough for interest, and not too 
much for friendly feeling. No game is played in better 
humor — never lost till won — the game 's alive till the 
last ball. True it is that certain evil-disposed persons 
will sometimes leave all proper feelings behind them ; 
and, if conceited of their own play, or bent on mortifying 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF CRICKET. 39 

their adversaries, " angry passions rise," none can won- 
der. But for the most part there is so little to ruffle the 
temper, or to cause unpleasant collision, that there is 
no place so free from temptation — no such happy plains 
or lands of innocence — as our cricket fields. We give 
bail for our good behavior from the moment that we 
enter them. Still is a cricket-field a sphere of whole- 
some discipline in obedience and good order; not to 
mention that manly spirit that faces danger without 
shrinking, and bears disappointment with good nature. 
Disappointment ! and say where is there more poignant 
disappointment, while it lasts, than after all your prac- 
tice for a match, and anxious thought and" resolution 
to avoid every chance, and score off every possible ball, 
to be balked and run out, caught at the slip, or stumped 
even off' a shooter. "The course of true love (even for 
cricket) never did run smooth." Old Robinson, one of 
the finest batsmen of his day, had six unlucky innings 
in succession ; once caught by Hammond, from a draw ; 
then bowled with shooters, or picked up at short slip, 
the poor fellow said he had lost all his play, thinking 
" the fault is in ourselves, and not our stars ; " and 
was with difficulty persuaded to play one match more, 
in which — whose heart does not rejoice to hear? — he 
made one hundred and thirty runs. 

"But as to stirring excitement," writes a friend, 
" what can surpass a hardly contested match when you 
have been manfully playing an up-hill game, and grad- 
ually the figures on the telegraph keep telling a better 



40 THE CRICKET FIELD, 

and a better tale, till at last the scorers stand up and 
proclaim a tie, and you win the game by a single and 
rather a nervous wicket, or by five or ten runs." If in 
the field with a match of this sort, and trying hard to 
prevent these few runs being knocked off by the last 
wickets, I know of no excitement so intense for the 
time, or which lasts so long afterwards. The recollec- 
tion of these critical moments will make the heart jump 
for years and years to come ; and it is extraordinary to 
see the delight with which men call up these grand mo- 
ments to memory ; and to be sure how they will talk 
and chatter, their eyes glistening and pulses getting 
quicker, as if they were again finishing " that rattling 
good match." People talk of the excitement of a good 
run with the Quorn or Belvoir hunt. I have now and 
then tumbled in for these good things ; and, as far as 
my own feelings go, I can safely say that a fine run is 
not to be compared to a good match ; and the excite- 
ment of the keenest sportsman is nothing either in 
intensity or duration to that caused by a " near thing " 
at cricket. The next good run takes the place of the 
other ; whereas hard matches, like the snow-ball, gather 
as they go. " This is my decided opinion ; and that, 
after watching and weighing the subject for some years. 
I have seen men tremble and turn pale at a near match, 
while through the field the deepest and most awful 
silence reigns, unbroken but by some nervous fieldsman 
humming a tune, or snapping his fingers, to hide his 
agitation." 



41 



CHAP. III. 

THE HAMBLETON CLUB AND THE OLD PLAYEBS. 

What have become of the old scores and the earliest 
records of the game of cricket ? Bentley's Book of 
Matches gives the principal games from the year 1786 ; 
but where are the earlier records of matches made by 
Dehany, Paulett, and Sir Horace Mann ? All burnt ! 

What the destruction of Rome and its records by 
the Gauls was to Niebuhr, — what the fire of London 
was to the antiquary in his walk from Pudding Lane . 
to Pie Corner, such was the burning of the Pavilion at 
Lord's, and all the old score books — it is a mercy that 
the old painting of the M. C. C. was saved — to the 
annalist of cricket. " When we were built out by 
Dorset Square," says Mr. E. H. Budd, " we played 
for three years where the Regent's Canal has since 
been cut, and still called our ground " Lord's," and 
our dining-room " the Pavilion." Here many a time 
have I looked over the old papers of Dehany and Sir 
H. Mann ; but the room was burnt, and the old scores 
perished in the flames. 
4* 



42 



THE CRICKET FIELD. 



The following are curious as the oldest scores preser- 
ved, — one of the north, the other of the South : — - 

NAMES OF THE PERSONS WHO PLAYED AGAINST 
SHEFFIELD. 

In 1771 at Nottingham, and 1772 at Shefield. 



Nottingham, Aug. 26, 1771 




Sheffield June 1, 1772. 


Huthwayte 




Coleman 


Turner 




Turner 


Loughman 




Loughman 


Coleman 




Roe 


Roe 




Spurs 


Spurr 




Stocks 


Stocks 




Collishaw 


Collishaw 




Troop 


Troop 




Mew 


Mew 




Bamford 


Rawson. 




Gladwin. 


Sheffield. 


Nottingha 


m. 


Nottingham. 


Sheffield 


1st inn. 81 


1st inn. 


76 


1st inn. 14 


Near 70 


2nd 62 


2nd 


112 




3rd 105 








248 




188 




Tuesday, 9 o'clock, a. 


m. 


Nottingham gave in. 


commenced, 8th man 0, 


9th 




5, 1 to come in, and onty 


' 60 




a head, when the Sheffield left 




the field. 











THE HAMBLEDON CLUB. 



43 



TLENT AGAINST ALL ENGLAND. 

Played in the Artillery -Ground) London, 1746. 



2nd 


Innings* 


b by Mills. 


b 


Hadswell. 


b 


Ditto. 


b 


Danes. 


b 


Mills. 


b 


Hadswell. 


c 


Kips. 


c 


Ld. J. Sackville 


b 


Hadswell. 


b 


Mills. 


— 


not out. 



ENGLAND. 

1st Innings, 

RUNS. HUNS. 

Harris b by Hadswell 4 

Dingate 3 b Ditto 11 

Newland Ob Mills 3 

Cuddy Ob Hadswell. 2 

Green Ob Mills 5 

Waymark ... 7 b Ditto 9 

Bryan 12 s Kips 7 

Newland 18 — not out . . 15 

Harris Ob Hadswell. 1 

Smith c Bartrum.. 8 

Newland Ob Mills .... 5 

Byes Byes . . 

40 70 



KENT. 

1st Innings, 2nd Innings* 

RUNS. RUNS. 

Lord Sackville 5 c by Waymark . 3 b by Harris. 

Long Robin. . 7 b Newland . . 9 b Newland* 

Mills Ob Harris 6 c Ditto. 

Hadswell .... Ob Ditto 5 — not out. 

Cutbush 3 c Green 7 — not out. 

Bartrum 2 b Newland. . b Newland. 

Danes 6 b Ditto c Smith. 

Sawyer . . c "Waymark . 5 b Newland. 

Kips 12 b Harris 10 b Harris. 

Mills 7 — not oiit . . . 2 b Newland. 

Romney 11 b Harris.... 8 c Harris. 

Byes.... 3 

53 58 



44 THE CRICKET EIELD. 

And now the oldest chronicler is Old Nyren, who 
wrote an account of the cricketers of his time. The 
said Old Nyren borrowed the pen of our kind friend 
Charles Cowden Clarke, to whom John Keats dedi- 
cated an epistle, and who rejoiced in the friendship of 
Charles Lamb ; and none but a kindred spirit to Elia 
could have written like " Old Nyren." Nyren was a 
fine old English yeoman, whose chivalry was cricket : 
and Mr. Clarke has faithfully recorded his vivid descrip- 
tions and animated recollections. And, with his charm- 
ing little volume in hand, and inkhorn at my button, 
in 1837 I made a* tour among the cottages of William 
Belden, and the few surviving worthies of the same 
generation; and, having also the advantage of a MS. 
by the Rev. John Midford, taken from many a winter's 
evening with Old Fennex, I am happy to attempt the 
best account that the lapse of time admits, of cricket in 
the olden time. 

From a MS. my friend received from the late Mr. 
William Ward, it appears that the wickets were placed 
twenty-two yards apart as long since as the year 1700 ; 
that stumps were then only one foot high, but two feet 
wide. The width some persons have doubted ; but it 
is rendered credible by the auxiliary evidence that 
there was, in those days, width enough between the 
two stumps for cutting the wide blockhole already men- 
tioned, and also because — whereas now we hear of 
stumps and bails — we read formerly of " two stumps 
with one stump laid across." 



THE HAMBLEDON CLUB. 45 

We are informed, also, that putting down the wick- 
ets to make a man out in running, instead of the old 
custom of popping the ball into the hole, was adopted 
on account of severe injuries to the hands, and that the 
wicket was changed at the same time — 1779-1780 — to 
the dimensions of twenty-two inches by six, with a 
third stump added. 

Before this alteration the art of defence was almost 
unkown : balls often passed over the wicket, and often 
passed through. At the time of the alteration Old 
Nyren truly predicted that the innings would not be 
shortened but better played. The long pod and curved 
form of the bat, as seen in the old paintings, was made 
only for hitting, and for ground balls too. Length balls 
were then by no means common ; neither would low 
stumps encourage them : and even upright play was 
then practised by very few. Old Nyren relates that 
one Harry Hall, a gingerbread baker of Farnham, gave 
peripatetic lectures to young players, and always 
insisted on keeping the left elbow well up ; in other 
words, on straight play. " Now-a-days," said Beld- 
ham, "all the world knows that; but when I began 
there was very little length bowling, very little straight 
play, and little defence either." Fennex, said he, was 
the first who played out at balls ; before his day batt- 
ing was too much about the crease. Beldham said 
that his own supposed tempting of Providence con- 
sisted in running in to hit. " You do frighten me 



46 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

there jumping out of your ground," said our Squire 
Paulett: and Fennex used also to relate how, when he 
played forward to the pitch of the ball, his father 
"had never seen the like in all his days;" the said 
days extending a long way back towards the beginning 
of the century. "While speaking of going in to hit, 
Beldham said, " My opinion has always been that too 
little is attempted in that direction. Judge your ball, 
and, when the least overpitched, go in and hit her 
away." In this opinion Mr. C. Taylor's practice 
would have borne Beldham out, and a fine dashing 
game this makes, only it is a game for none but prac- 
tised players. When you are perfect in your ground, 
then, and then only, try what you can do out of it, as 
the best means to scatter the enemy and open the field. 

" As to bowling," continued Beldham, " when I 
way a boy (say 1780), nearly all bowling was fast, and 
all along the ground. In those days the Hambledon 
Club could beat all England ; but our three parishes 
around Farnham beat Hambledon." 

It is quite evident that Farnham was the cradle of 
cricketers. " Surrey," in the old scores, means noth- 
ing more than the Farnham parishes. This corner of 
Surrey, in every match against All England, was reck- 
oned as part of Hampshire, and Beldham truly said 
" you find us regularly on the Hampshire side in 
Bentley's Book." 

" I told you, sir," said Beldham, " that in my early 



THE HAMBLEDON CLUB. 47 

days all bowling was what we called fast, or at least a 
moderate pace. The first lobbing slow bowler I ever 
saw was Tom Walker. When, in 1792, England 
played Kent, I did feel so ashamed of such baby bow- 
ling ; but, after all, he did more than even David 
Harris himself. Two years after, in 1794, at Dartford 
Brent, Tom Walker, with his slow bowling, headed a 
side against David Harris, and beat him easily." 

" Kent, in early times, was not equal to our coun- 
ties. Their great man was Crawte, and he was taken 
away from our parish of Alresford by Mr. Amherst, the 
gentleman who made the Kent matches. In those 
days, except around our parts, Farnham and the Surrey 
side of Hampshire, a little play went a long way. 
Why, no man used to be more talked of than Yalden, 
and when he came among us we soon made up our 
minds what the rest of them must be. If you want to 
know, sir, the time the Hambledon Club was formed, I 
can tell by this ; — when we beat them, in 1780, I heard 
Mr. Paulett say, ' Here have I been thirty years raising 
our club, and are we to be beaten by a mere parish ? ' 
so there must have been a cricket club that played every 
week regularly, as long ago as 1750. We used to go 
as eagerly to a match as if it were two armies fighting ; 
we stood at nothing if we were allowed the time ; from 
our parish to Hambledon is twenty-seven miles, and 
we used to ride both ways the same day, early and 
late. At last I and John Wells were about building 



48 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

a cart, you have heard of tax carts, sir ; well the tax 
was put on then, and that stopped us. The members 
of the Hambledon Club had a caravan to take their 
eleven about, and used once to play always in velvet 
caps. Lord Winchelsea's eleven used to play in silver 
laced hats, and always the dress was knee breeches and 
stockings. We never thought of knocks ; and remem- 
ber I played against Browne of Brighton too. Cer- 
tainly you would see a bump heave under the stocking, 
and even the blood came through ; but I never knew a 
man killed, now you ask the question, and never saw 
any accident of much consequence, though many an all 
but, in all my experience. Fancy the old fashion before 
cricket shoes, when I saw John Wells tear a finger 
nail off against his shoe-buckle in picking up a ball."' 

" Your book, sir, says much about old Nyren. This 
Nyren was fifty years old when I began to play ; he 
was our general in the Hambledon matches, but not 
half a player as we reckon now. He had a small farm 
and inn near Hambledon, and took care of the ground." 

" I remember when many things first came into the 
game which are common now. The law for leg before 
wicket was not made, nor much wanted, till Ring, one 
of our best hitters, was shabby enough to get his leg 
in the way, and take advantage of the bowlers, and 
when Tom Taylor, another of the best hitters, did the 
same, the bowlers found themselves beaten, and the 
law was passed to make leg before wicket out. The 



THE HAMBLEDON CLUB. 49 

law against jerking was owing to the frightful pace 
Tom Walker put on, and I believe that Harry also 
tried something more like the modern throwing bowl- 
ing, and caused the words against throwing also. 
Wills was not the inventor of that kind of round 
bowling ; he only revived what was forgotten or new 
to the young folk. 

" The umpires did not formerly pitch the wickets. 
David Harris used to think a great deal of pitching 
himself a good- wicket, and took much pains in suiting 
himself every match day." 

"Lord Stowell was fond of cricket. He employed 
me to make a ground for him at Holt Pound." 

In the last century, when the waggon and the pack- 
horse supplied the place of the penny train, there was 
little opportunity for these frequent meetings of men 
from distant counties that now puzzles us to remember 
who is North and who is South, who is Surrey or who 
is Kent. The matches then were truly county matches, 
and had more of the spirit of hostile tribes and rival 
clans. " There was no mistaking the Kent boys," 
said Beldham, " when they came staring in to the 
Green Man. A few of us had grown used to London, 
but Kent and Hampshire men had but to speak, or 
even show themselves, and you need not ask them 
which side they were on." So the match seemed like 
Sir Horace Mann and Lord Winchelsea and their 
respective tenantry — for when will the feudal system 



50 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

be quite extinct ? And there was no little pride and 
honor in the parishes that sent them up, and many a 
flagon of ale depending in the farms or the hop grounds 
they severally represented, as to whether they should, 
as the spirit-stirring saying was, "prove themselves 
the better men." " I remember in one match," said 
Eeldham, "in Kent, Ring was playing against David 
Harris. The game was much against him. Sir Horace 
Mann was cutting about with his stick among the 
daisies, and cheering every run, — you would have 
thought his whole fortune (and he did always bet some 
hundreds) was staked upon the game ; and as a new 
man was going in, he went across to Ring, and said, 
' Ring, carry your bat through and make up all the 
runs, and I'll give you 10Z. a-year for life.' Well, 
Ring was out for sixty runs, and only three to tie, and 
four to .beat, and the last man made them. It was Sir 
Horace who took Aylward away with him out of 
Hampshire, but the best bat made but a poor bailiff we 
heard. 

" Cricket was played in Sussex very early, before 
my day at least ; but that there was no good play I 
know by this, that Richard Newland, of Slinden, in 
Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard Nyren, and 
that no Sussex man could be found to play him. Now 
a second rate player of our parish beat Newland easily ; 
so you may judge what the rest of Sussex then were. 
But before 1780 there were some good players about 



THE HAMBLEDON CLUB. 51 

Hambledon and the Surrey side of Hampshire. Crawte, 
the best of the Kent men, was taken away from us ; so 
you will not be wrong, sir, in writing down that Farn- 
ham, and thirty miles round, reared all the best players 
up to my day, about 1780. 

" There were some who were then called ' the old 
players,' and here Fennex's account quite agreed with 
Beldham's, including Frame and old Small, who Ben- 
nett believed by tradition to have been the man who 
\ found out cricket,' or brought play to any degree of 
perfection; also Sueter, the wicket-keeper, who, in 
those days, had very little stumping to do, and Min- 
shull and Colshorn, all mentioned in Nyren." "These 
men played puddling about their crease with no free- 
dom. I like to see players upright and well forward, 
to face the ball like a man. The Duke of Dorset made 
a match at Dartford Brent between ' the Old Players 
and the New.' — You laugh, sir," said this tottering sil- 
ver-haired old man, " but we all were new once ; — 
well I played with the Walkers, John Wells, and the 
rest of our men, and beat the old ones very easily." 

" Tom Walker was the most tedious fellow to bowl 
to, and the slowest runner between wickets I ever saw. 
I have seen, in running a four, Noah Mann, as fast as 
Tom was slow, overtake him, pat him on the back, and 
say, ' Good name for you is Walker, for you never were 
a runner.' It used to be said that David Harris had 
once bowled him 170 balls for one run ! David was a 



52 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

potter by trade, and in a kind of skittle alley made be- 
tween hurdles, lie used to practise bowling four dif- 
ferent balls from one end, and then picking them up he 
would bowl them back again. His bowling cost him a 
great deal of practice ; but it proved well worth his 
while, for no man ever bowled like him, and he was 
always first chosen of all the men in England. Nil 
sine labore, remember young cricketers all. ' Lam- 
bert ' (not the great player of that name), said Nyren, 
* had a most deceitful and teasing way of delivering the 
ball ; he tumbled out the Kent and Surrey men, one 
after another, as if picked off by a rifle corps. His per- 
fection is accounted for by the circumstance that, when 
he was tending his father's sheep, he would set up a 
hurdle or two, and bowl away for hours together.' 

" There was some good hitting in those days, though 
too little defence. Tom Taylor would cut away in fine 
style, almost after the manner of Mr. Budd. Old Small 
was among the first members of the Hambledon Club. * 
He began to play about 1750, and Lumpy Stevens at the 
same time. I can give you some notion of what cricket 
was in those days, for Lumpy, a very bad bat, as he 
was well aware, once said to me, ' Beldham, what do 
you think cricket must have been in those days when I 
was thought a good batsman ? ' But fielding was very 
good as far back as I can remember." Now what Beld- 
ham called good fielding must have been good enough. 
He was himself one of the safest hands at a catch. Mr. 



THE HAMBLEDON CLUB. 53 

Budd, when past forty, was still one of the quickest 
men I ever played with, taking always middle wicket, 
and often, by swift running, doing part of long field's 
work. Sparks, Fennex, Bennett, and young Small, 
and Mr. Parry, were first rate, not to mention Beagley, 
whose style of long stopping in the North and South 
Match of 1836, made Lord Frederick and Mr. Ward 
justly proud of so good a representative of the game in 
their younger days. Albeit, an old player of seventy, 
describing the merit's of all these men, said, " put Mr. 
King at point, Mr. C. Ridding long-stop, and Mr. 
Pickering cover, and I never saw the man that could 
beat either of them." 

" John Wells was a most dangerous man in a single 
wicket match, being so dead a shot at a wicket. In a 
celebrated match Lord Frederick warned the Honorable 
H. Tuffton to beware of him ; but John Wells found an 
opportunity of maintaining his character by shying 
down from the side little more than the single stump. 
Tom Sheridan joined some of our matches, but he was 
no good but to make people laugh. In our days there 
were no padded gloves. I have seen Tom Walker rub 
his bleeding fingers in the dust ! David used to say he 
liked to rind him." 

" The matches against twenty-two were not uncom- 
mon in the last century. In 1788 the Hambledon 
Club played two-and-twenty at Cold Ash Hill. ' Draw- 
ing ' between leg and wicket is not a new invention. 
5* 



54 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

Old Small, of 1750, was famous for drawing, and for 
the greater facility he changed the crooked bat of his 
day for a straight bat. There was some fine cutting 
before Saunders' day. Harry "Walker was the first, I 
believe, who brought it to perfection. The next gen- 
uine cutter, for they were very scarce (I never called 
mine cutting, not like that of Saunders at least), was 
Robinson. Walker and Robinson would wait for the 
ball all but past the wicket, and cut with great force. 
Others made good off hits, but did not hit late enough 
for a good Cut. I would never cut with slow bowling. 
I believe that Walker, Fennex and myself, first opened 
the old players' eyes to what could be done with the 
bat ; Walker by cutting, and Fennex and I by forward 
play : but all improvement was owing to David Harris's 
bowling. His bowling rose almost perpendicular: it 
was once pronounced a jerk ; it was altogether most ex- 
traordinary. For thirteen years I averaged forty-three 
a match, though frequently I had only one innings ; 
but I never could half play unless runs were really 
wanted." 



HAMBLEDONIANS DISPERSED. 55 



CHAP. IV. 

CRICKET GENERALLY ESTABLISHED AS A NATIONAL 
GAME BY THE END OE THE LAST CENTUBY. 

Little is recorded of the Hambledon Club after the 
year 1786. It broke up when Old Nyren left it, in 
1791. Though in this last year the true old Hamble- 
don Eleven all but beat twenty-two of Middlesex at 
Lord's. Their cricket - ground on Broadhalfpenny 
Down, in Hampshire, was so far removed from the 
many noblemen and gentlemen who had seen and 
admired the severe bowling of David Harris, the bril- 
liant hitting of Beldham, and the interminable defence 
of the Walkers, that these worthies soon found a more 
genial sphere for their energies on the grounds of Kent, 
Surrey, and Middlesex. Still, though the land was 
deserted, the men survived, and imparted a knowledge 
of their craft to gentles and simples far and wide. 

Most gladly would we chronicle that these good men 
and true were actuated by a great and a patriotic spirit, 
to diffuse an aid to civilization — for such our game 
claims to be — among their wonder-stricken fellow- 



56 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

countrymen ; but, in truth, we confess that " reaping 
golden opinions" and coins, " from all kinds of men," 
as well as that indescribable tumult and joyous emo- 
tions which attend the ball vigorously propelled or 
heroically stopped, while hundreds of voices shout 
applause, that such stirring motives, more powerful far 
with vain glorious man than any foreshortened view of 
abstract virtue, tended to the migration of the pride of 
Hambledon. Still, doubtful though tbe motive, certain 
is the fact, that the Hambledon players did carry their 
bats and stumps out of Hampshire into the adjoining- 
counties, and gradually, like all great commanders, 
taught their adversaries to conquer too. In some 
instances, as with Lord Winchelsea, Mr. Amherst, and 
others, noblemen combined the utile dulci, pleasure and 
business, and retained a great player as a keeper or a 
bailiff, as Martingell once was engaged by Earl Ducie. 
In other instances, the play of the summer led to 
employment through the winter; or else these busy 
bees lived on the sweets of their sunshine toil, enjoying 
otium cum digfiitate — that is, living like gentlemen, 
with nothing to do. 

This accounts for our finding these Hampshire men 
playing Kent matches ; being, like a learned Lord in 
Punch's picture, " naturalized everywhere," or citizens 
of the world. 

Let us trace these Hambledonians in all their con- 
tests, from the date mentioned (1786 to 1800), the 



OLD CRICKET GROUNDS. 57 

eventful period of the French Revolution and Nelson's 
victories, and see how the Bank stopping payment, the 
mutiny of the fleet, and the threatened invasion, put 
together, did not prevent balls from flying over the 
tented field, in a far more innocent and rational way 
on this than on the other side of the water. 

Now, what were the matches in the last century — 
6 * eleven gentlemen against the twelve Csesars? " No ! 
these, though ancient names, are of modern times. 
Kent and England was as good an annual match in the 
last as in the present century. The White Conduit 
Fields and the Artillery- Ground supplied the place of 
Lord's, though in 1787 the name of Lord's is found in 
Eentley's Matches, implying, of course, the old Maryle- 
bone Ground, now Dorset Square, under Thomas Lord, 
and not the present by St. John's Wood, more properly 
deserving the name of Dark's than Lord's. The Kent- 
ish battle-fields were Sevenoaks, the land of Clout, one 
of the original makers of cricket-balls ; Coxheath, 
Dandelion Fields, in the Isle of Thanet, and Cobham 
Park ; also Dartford Brent and Pennenden Heath ; 
there is also early mention of Gravesend, Rochester, 
and Woolwich. 

Next in importance to the Kent matches were those 
of Hampshire and of Surrey, with each of which 
counties indifferently the Hambledon men used to play. 
For it must not be supposed that the whole county of 
Surrey put forth a crop of stumps and wickets all at 



58 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

once : we have already said that malt and hops and 
cricket have ever gone together. Two parishes in 
Surrey, adjoining Hants, won the original laurels for 
their county, and those in the immediate vicinity of 
the Farnham hop county. The Holt, near Farnham, 
and Moulsey Hurst, were the Surrey grounds. The 
match might truly have been called " Farnham' s hop- 
gatherers v. those of Kent." The former, aided occa- 
sionally by men who drank the ale of Alton, just as 
Burton-on-Trent, life-sustainer to our Indian empire, 
sends forth its giants, refreshed with bitter ale, to 
defend the honor of the neighboring towns and 
counties. The men of Hampshire, after Broadhalf- 
penny was abandoned to docks and thistles, pitched 
their tents generally either upon Windmill Downs or 
upon Stoke Downs ; and once they played a match 
against T. Asheton Smith, whose mantle has descended 
on a worthy representative, whether on the level turf 
or by the cover's side. Albeit, when that gentleman 
has a " meet," as occasionally advertised at Hambledon, 
he must unconsciously avoid the spot where " titch and 
turn" — the Hampshire cry — did once exhilarate the 
famous James Aylward, among others, as he astonished 
the Farnham waggoner, by continuing one and the same 
innings as the man drove up on the Tuesday afternoon 
and down on the Wednesday morning. This match 
was played at Andover, and the surnames of most of 
the Eleven may be read on the tombstones, with the 



MIDDLESEX. HARROW. 59 

best of characters, in Andover Churchyard. Bourne 
Paddock, Earl Darnley's estate, and Burley Park, in 
Rutlandshire, constituted often the debatable ground 
in their respective counties. Earl Darnley, as well as 
Sir Horace Mann and Earl Winchelsea, Mr. Paulett 
and Mr. East, lent their names and patronage to 
Elevens ; sometimes in the places mentioned, some- 
times at Lord's, and sometimes at Perriam Downs, 
near Luggershal, in Wiltshire. 

Middlesex also, exclusively of the Marylebone Club, 
had its Eleven in these days ; or, we should say, its 
twenty-two, for that was the number then required to 
stand the disciplined forces of Hampshire, Kent, or 
England. And this reminds us of an " Uxbridge 
ground," where Middlesex played and lost, and 
64 Hornchurch, Essex," where Essex, in 1791, was suf- 
ficiently advanced to win against Marylebone, an occa- 
sion memorable, because Lord Frederic Beauclerk there 
played his first recorded match, making scarce any 
runs, but bowling four wickets. " There was also," 
writes the Hon. R. Grimstone, " 'the Bowling-green,' 
at Harrow-on-the-Hill, where the school played : Rich- 
ardson, who subsequently became Mr. Justice Richard- 
son, was the captain of the School Eleven in 1782." 

Already, in 1790, the game was spreading north- 
wards, or, rather, proofs exist that it had long before 
struck far and wide its roots and branches in northern 
latitudes ; and also that it was a game as popular with 



60 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

the men of labor as the men of leisure, and therefore 
incontestably of home growth : no mere exotic, or im- 
portation, of the favored few can cricket be, if, like its 
namesake, it is found "a household word" with those 
whom Burns aptly calls " the many-aproned sons of 
mechanical life." 

In 1791, Eton, that is, the old Etonians, played 
Marylebone, four players given on either side ; and all 
true Etonians will thank us for informing them, not 
only that the seven Etonians were more than a match 
for their adversaries, but also that this match proves 
that Eton had, at that early date, the honor of sending 
forth the most distinguished amateurs of the day ; for 
Lord Winchelsea, Hon. H. Fitzroy, Earl Darnley, 
Hon. E. C. Bligh, C. Anguish, Asheton Smith — good 
men and true — were Etonians all. This match was 
played in Burley Park, Rutlandshire, on the following 
day, June 25th, 1791: the Marylebone played eleven 
yeomen and artisans of Leicester ; and though the 
Leicestrians cut a sorry figure, still the fact that the 
Midland Counties practised cricket sixty years ago is 
worth recording. Peter Heward, of Leicester, a famous 
wicket-keeper, of twenty years since, told me of a trial 
match in which he saw his father, quite an old man, 
with another veteran of his own standing, quickly put 
out with the old-fashioned slow bowling for some 
twenty runs a really good Eleven — good, that is, 
against the modern style of bowling ; and cricket was 



CBICKET (EARLY) AT NOTTINGHAM. 61 

not a new game in this old man's early days (say 1780) 
about Leicester and Nottingham, as the score in page 
33, alone would prove ; for such a game as cricket, 
evidently of gradual development, must have been 
played in some primitive form many a long year before 
the date of 1775, in which it had excited sufficient 
interest, and was itself sufficiently matured in form to 
show the two Elevens of Sheffield and of Nottingham. 
Add to this, what we have already mentioned, a rude 
form of cricket as far north as Angus and Lothian in 
1700, and we can hardly doubt that cricket was known 
as early in the Midland as in the Southern Counties. 
The men of Nottingham — land of Clarke, Barker, and 
of Redgate — next month, in the same year (1791), 
threw down the gauntlet, and shared the same fate ; 
and next day the Marylebone, " adding," in a cricket- 
ing sense, "insult unto injury," played twenty-two of 
them, and won by thirteen runs. 

In 1790, the shopocracy of Brighton had also an 
Eleven; and Sussex and Surrey, in 1792, sent an 
eleven against England to Lord's, who scored the 
longest number in one innings on record — 453 runs ! 
" M. C. C. v. twenty-two of Nottingham," we now find 
an annual match; and also u M. C. C. v. Brighton," 
which becomes at once worthy of the fame that Sussex 
long has borne. In 1793, the old Westminster men 
all but beat the old Etonians : and Essex and Herts, 
too near not to emulate the fame of Kent and Surrey, 



62 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

were content, like second-rate performers, to have, 
though playing twenty-two, one benefit between them, 
in the shape of defeat in one innings from England. 
And here we are reminded by two old players, a Kent 
and an Essex man, that, being schoolboys in 1785, 
they can respectively testify that, both in Kent and in 
Essex, cricket appeared to them more of a village game 
than they have ever seen it of late years. " There was 
a cricket-bat behind the door, or else up in the bacon 
rack, in every cottage. We heard little of clubs, 
except around London ; still the game was played by 
many or by few, in every school and village green in 
Essex and in Kent, and the field placed much as when 
with the Sidmouth I played the Teignbridge Club in 
1826. Mr. Whitehead was the great hitter of Kent; 
and Frame and Small were names as often mentioned 
as Pilch and Parr by our boys now." And now (1793) 
the game had penetrated further West ; for eleven 
yeomen at Oldfield Bray, in Berkshire, had learned 
long enough to defeat a good eleven of the Marylebone 
Club. 

In 1795, the Hon. Colonel Lennox, memorable for a 
duel with the Duke of York, fought on the cricket 
ground at Dartford Brent, headed Elevens against the 
Earl of Winchelsea ; and now, first the Marylebone 
eleven beat sixteen Oxonians on Bullingdon Green. 

In 1797, the Montpelier Club and ground attract our 
notice. The name of this club is one of the most 



HON. COLONEL LENNOX. 63 

ancient, and their ground a short distance only from 
the ground of Hall of Camberwell. 

SwafFham, in Norfolk, is now mentioned for the first 
time. But Norfolk lies out of the usual road, and is a 
county that, as Mr. Dickens said of Golden Square, be- 
fore it was the residence of Cardinal Wiseman, " is 
nobody's way to or from any place." So, in those 
slow coach and pack-horse days, the patrons of Kent, 
Surrey, Hants, and Marylebone, who alone gave to 
what else were " airy nothing, a local habitation and a 
name," could not so easily extend their circuit to the 
land of turkeys, lithotomy, and dumplings. But it 
happened once that Lord Frederic Beauclerk was heard 
to say, his eleven should beat any three elevens in the 
county of Norfolk ; whence arose a challenge from the 
Norfolk men, whom, sure enough, his Lordship did beat, 
and that in one innings ; and a print, though not on 
pocket-handkerchiefs, was struck off to perpetuate this 
honorable achievement. 

Lord F. Beauclerk was now one of the first batsmen 
of his day ; as also were the Hon. H. and I. Tuffton ; 
and frequently headed a division of the Marylebone, or 
some county club, against Middlesex, and even Hamp- 
stead and Highgate. 

In this year (1798) these gentlemen aforesaid made 
the first attempt at a Gentlemen and Players' match ; 
and on this first occasion the players won ; but when 
we mention that they had three players given, and also 



64 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

that T. Walker, Beldham, and Hammond were the 
three, certainly it was like playing England, " the part 
of England being left out by particular desire," 

Kent attacked England in 1798, but, being beaten 
in about half an innings, we find the Kentish men, in 
1800, though still hankering after that cosmopolitan 
distinction, modestly accept the odds of nineteen, and 
afterwards play twenty-three men to twelve. 

The chief patronage, and consequently the chief 
practice, in cricket, was beyond all comparison in Lon- 
don. There the play was nearly all professional : even 
the gentlemen made a profession of it ; and, therefore, 
though cricket was far more extensively spread through- 
out the villages of Kent than of Middlesex, the clubs 
of the metropolis figure in the score books as defying 
all competition. Professional players, we may observe, 
have always a decided advantage in respect of judicious 
choice and mustering their best men. The best eleven 
players are almost always known, and can be mustered 
on a given day. Neither favor, friendship, nor eti- 
quette interferes with their election ; but the eleven 
gentlemen of England can never be anything more than 
the best eleven known to the party who make the 
match, and such as can spare the time and money 
which the match demands. 

Having now traced the rise and progress of the game 
to the time of its general establishment till the time 
that Beldham had shown the full powers of the bat 



GENTLEMEN V. PLAYERS. 65 

and Lord Frederic had, as Fennex always declared, 
formed his style upon Beldham's ; and since now we 
approach the era of a new school, and the forward play 
of Fennex, — which his father termed an innovation 
and presumption " contrary to all experience," — till 
the same forward play was proved effectual by Lam- 
bert ; and Hammond had shown that, in spite of wicket 
keepers, bowling, if slow especially, might be met and 
hit away at the pitch ; now we will wait to character- 
ize, in the words of eye-witnesses, the heroes of the 
contests already mentioned. 

Of the old players I may be brief, because the few 
old gentlemen (with one of whom I am in daily com- 
munication) who have heard even the names of the 
Walkers, Frame, Small, and David Harris, are passing 
away, full of years, and almost all their written history 
consists in undiscriminating scores. 

In point of style, the old players did not play the 
steady game with maiden overs as at present. The de- 
fensive was comparatively unknown : both the bat and 
the wicket, and the style of bowling too, were all 
adapted to a short life and a merry one. The wooden 
substitute for a ball, as in Cat and Dog, before de- 
scribed, evidently implied a hitting, and not a stopping 
game. 

The wicket, as we collect from a MS. furnished by 
an old friend to the late William Ward, Esq., was, in 
the early days of the Hambledon Club, one foot high 
6* 



66 THE CKICKET FIELD. 

and two feet wide, consisting of two stumps only, with 
one stump laid across. Thus straight balls passed be- 
tween, and what we now call well pitched balls would 
of course rise over. Where, then, was the encourage- 
ment to block, when fortune would so often serve the 
place of science ? And, as to the bat, look at the pic- 
ture of cricket as played in the old Artillery Ground ; 
the bat is curved at the end like a hockey stick, or the 
handle of a spoon, — and as common implements usually 
are adapted to the work to be performed, you will 
readily believe that in olden time the freest hitter was 
the best batsman. The bowling was all along the 
ground, hand and eye being everything, and judgment 
nothing, because the art originally was to bowl nnder 
the bat ; the wicket was too low for rising balls ; and 
the reason we hear sometimes of the block hole was, 
not that the block hole originally denoted guard, but 
because between these two-feet-asunder stumps there 
was cut a hole big enough to contain the ball, and, as 
now with the scool boy's game of rounders, the hitter 
was made out in running a notch by the ball being 
popped into this hole (whence popping crease) before 
the point of the bat could reach it. 

Did we say running a notch ? unde notch ? What 
wonder ere the days of useful knowledge, and Sir 
William Curtis's three B/s, or reading, writing, and 
arithmetic, that natural science should be evolved in a 
truly natural way ; what wonder that notches on a 



CRICKET IN FORMER DAYS. 67 

stick like the notches in the milk- woman's tally in 
Hogarth's picture, should supply the place of those 
complicated papers of vertical columns, which subject 
the bowling, the batting, and the fielding to a process 
severely and scrupulously just, of analytical observa- 
tion, or differential calculus. Where now there sit 
on kitchen chairs, with ink bottle tied to a stump 
the worse for wear, Messrs. Caldecourt and Bailey 
('tis pity two such men should ever not be umpires), 
with an uncomfortable length of paper on their 
knees, and large tin telegraphic letters above their 
heads ; and where now is Lillywhite's printing press 
to hand down every hit as soon as made on twopenny 
cards to the next generation; there, or in a similar 
position, old Frame, or young Small (young once : he 
died in 1834, aged eighty) might have placed a trusty 
yeoman to cut notches with his bread and bacon knife 
on an ashen stick. Oh! 'tis enough to make the 
Hambiedon heroes sit upright in their graves with 
astonishment to think that, in the Gentlemen and 
Players' Match, in 1850, the cricketers of old Sparkes' 
Ground, at Edinburgh, could actually know the score 
of the first innings in London, almost as soon as the 
second had commenced. 

But when we say that the old players had little or 
nothing of the defensive, we speak of the play before 
1780, when David Harris flourished : for William 
Beldham distinctly assured us that the art of bowling 
over the bat by "length balls" originated with the 



68 THE CKICKET FIXLD. 

famous David. An assertion, we will venture to say, 
which requires a little, and only a little qualification. 
Length bowling, or three quarter balls, to use a popular, 
though 'exploded, expression, was introduced in David's 
time, and by him first brought to perfection. And what 
rather confirms this statement is, that the early bowl- 
ers, were very swift bowlers, — such was not only David, 
but the famous Brett, of earlier date, and Frame of 
great renown : a more moderate pace resulted from the 
new discovery of a well pitched bail ball. 

The old players well understood the art of twisting, 
or bias bowling. Lambert, " the little farmer," says 
Nyren, " improved on the art, and puzzled the Kent 
men in a great match, by twisting the reverse of the 
usual way, — that is, from the off to the leg stump." 
Tom Walker tried what Nyren calls the throwing- 
bowling, and defied all the players of the day to 
withstand this novelty ; but, by a council of the Ham- 
bledon Club, this was forbidden, and Wills, a Sussex 
man, had the praise of inventing it some twenty years 
later. In a notable match of the Hambledon Club, it 
was observed, at a critical point of the game, that the 
ball passed three times between the two stumps without 
knocking off the bail ; and then, first about 1780, a 
third stump was added, and, seeing that the new style 
of balls which rise over the bat rose also over the 
wickets, then but one foot high, the wicket was altered 
to the dimensions of 22 inches by 6, at which measure 



MEASUKEMENT OF WICKETS. 6& 

it remained till about 1814, when it was increased to 

26 inches by 8, and again to its present dimensions of 

27 inches by 8 in 1817. 

David Harris' bowling, Fennex used to say, intro- 
duced, or at least established and fixed, a steady and 
defensive style of batting. " I have seen," said Sparks, 
" seventy or eighty runs in an innings, though not more 
than eight or nine made at Harris's end." " Harris," 
said an excellent judge, who well remembers him, 
" attained nearly all the quickness of rise and height 
of delivery, of the over-hand bowling, with far greater 
straightness and precision. The ball appeared to be 
forced out from under his arm with some unaccountable 
jerk, so that it was delivered breast-high. His precision 
exceeded anything 1 have ever seen, insomuch that 
Tom Walker declared that, on one occasion, where turf 
was thin, and the color of the soil readily appeared, 
one spot was positively uncovered by the repeated 
pitching of David's balls in the same place." " This 
bowling," said Sparkes, " compelled you to make the 
best of your reach forward ; for if you let the ball pitch 
too near and crowd upon you, no player could possibly 
prevent a mistake from the height and rapidity with 
which it cut up the ground." This account agrees 
with the well-known description of Nyren. " Harris's 
mode of delivering the ball was very singular. He 
would bring it from under the arm by a twist, and 
nearly as high as his arm-pit, and with this action push 



70 THE CRICKET EIELD. 

it, as it were, from him. How it was that the balls 
acquired the velocity they did by this mode of delivery, 
I never could comprehend. His balls were very little 
beholden to the ground ; it was but a touch and up 
again ; and woe be to the man who did not get in to 
block then, for they had such a peculiar curl they would 
grind his fingers against the bat." 

And Nyren agrees with my informants in ascribing 
great improvement in batting, and he specifies, " par- 
ticularly in stopping " (for the act of defence, we said, 
was not essential to the batsman in the ideas of one of 
the old players), to the bowling of David Harris, and 
bears testimony to an assertion, that forward play, that 
is, meeting at the pitch balls considerably short of a 
half volley, was little known to the oldest players, and 
was called into requisition chiefly by the bowling of 
David Harris. Obviously, with the primitive fashion 
of ground bowling, called sneakers, forward play could 
have no place, and even well-pitched balls, like those of 
Noah Mann, alias Lumpy, of moderate pace might be 
played with some effect, even behind the crease ; but 
David Harris, with pace, pitch, and rapid rise combined, 
imperatively demanded a new invention, and such was 
forward play about 1800. Old Fennix, who died, alas ! 
in a Middlesex workhouse, aged eighty, in 1839 (had 
his conduct been as straightforward and upright as his 
bat, he would have known a better end), always 
declared that he was the first, and remained long 



FORWARD PLAY INVENTED. 71 

without followers ; and no small praise is due to the 
boldness and originality that set at nought the received 
maxims of his forefathers before he was born or thought 
of; daring to try things that, had they been ordinarily 
reasonable, would not, of course, have been ignored by 
Frame, by Pinchase, nor by Small. The world wants 
such men as Fennex ; men, who, like the late lamented 
Sir Robert Peel, will shake off the prejudices of birth, 
parentage, and education, and boldly declare that age 
has taught them wisdom, and that the policy of their 
predecessors, however expensively stereotyped, must be 
revised and corrected and adapted to the demands of a 
more inquiring generation. " My father,'' said Fenriex, 
" asked me how I came by that new play, reaching out 
as no one ever saw before." The same style be lived 
to see practised, not elegantly, but with wonderful 
power and effect by Lambert, " a most severe and 
resolute hitter ; " and Fennix also boasted that he had 
a most proficient disciple in Fuller Pilch : though I 
suspect — that as " poeta nascitur non Jit ; " that is, that 
all great performers appear to have brought the secret 
of their excellence into the world along with them, and 
are not the mere puppets of which others pull the 
strings — that Fuller Pilch may think he rather coin- 
cided with than learnt from William Fennex. 

Now the David Harris aforesaid, who wrought quite 
a revolution in the game, changing cricket from a back- 
ward and a slashing to a forward and defensive game, 



72 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

and claiming higher stumps to do justice to his skill — 
this David, whose bowling was many years before his 
generation, having all the excellence of Lillywhite's 
high delivery, though free from all imputation of unfair- 
ness — this David rose early, and late took rest, and ate 
the bread of carefulness, before he attained such 
distinction as, in these days of railroads, Thames tun- 
nels, and tubular gloves and bridges, to deserve the 
notice of our pen. " For," said John Bennett, " you 
might have seen David practising at dinner time and 
after hours, all the winter through;" and " many a 
Hampshire barn," said Beagley, "has been heard to 
resound with bats and balls as well as threshing." And 
now we must mention the men, who, at the end of the 
last century, represented the Pilch, the Parr, the Wen- 
man, and the Wisden of the present day. 

Lord Beauclerk was formed on the style of Beldham, 
whom, in brilliancy of hitting, he nearly resembled. 
The Hon. H. Bligh and Hon. H. Tufton were of the 
same school. Sir Peter Burrell was also a good hitter, 
and these were the most distinguished gentlemen play- 
ers of the day. Earl Winchelsea was in every principal 
match, but rather for his patronage than his play : and 
the Hon. Col. Lennox for the same reason. Mr. R. 
Whitehead was a Kent player of great celebrity. But 
Lord F, Beauclerk was the only gentleman who had 
any claim in the last century to play in an All England 
eleven. He was also one of the fastest runners. 



DAVID HAREIS. 73 

Hammond was the great wicket-keeper; but then the 
bowling was slow : Sparkes said he saw him catch out 
Robinson by a draw between leg and wicket. Free- 
mantle was the first long stop ; but Ray the finest field 
in England ; and in those days, when the scores were 
long, fielding was of even more consideration than at 
present. Of the professional players, Beldham, Ham- 
mond, Tom and Harry Walker, Freemantle, Robinson, 
Fennex, J. Wells, and J. Small were the first chosen 
after Harris had passed away ; for Nyren says that even 
Lord Beauclerk could hardly have seen David Harris 
in his prime. At this time there was a sufficient 
number of players to maintain the credit of the left 
hands. On the 10th of May, 1790, the Left-handed 
beat the Right by thirty-nine runs. This match reveals 
that Harris and Aylward, and the three best Kent 
players, Brazier, Crawte, and Clifford, — Sueter, the 
first distinguished wicket-keeper, — H. Walker, and 
Freemantle were all left-handed: so also was Noah 
Mann. 

The above mentioned players are quite sufficient to 
give some idea of the play of the last century. Sparkes 
is well known to the author of these pages as his quon- 
dam instructor. In batting, he differed not widely from 
the usual style of good players, save that he never 
played forward to any very great extent. Playing 
under leg, according to the old fashion (we call it old- 
fashion though Pilch adopts it,) served instead of the 
7 



74 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

far more elegant and efficient "draw." Sparkes was 
also a fair bias bowler, but of no great pace, and not 
very difficult. I remember his saying that the old 
school of slow bowling was beaten by Hammond 
setting the example of running in. " Hammond," he 
said, " on one occasion, hit back a slow ball to Lord F. 
Beauclerk with such frightful force that it just skimmed 
his Lordship's unguarded head, and he had scarcely 
nerve to bowl after. Of Fennex, we can also speak 
from our friend Rev. John Mitford. Fennex was a fair 
straight-forward hitter, and once as good a single wicket- 
player as any in England. His attitude was easy, and 
he played elegantly, and hit well from the wrist. If 
his bowling was any specimen of that of his contempo- 
raries, they were by no means to be despised. His 
bowling was very swift and of high delivery, the ball 
cut and ground up with great quickness and precision. 
Fennex used to say that the men of the present day 
had little idea of what the old underhand bowling 
really could effect; and, from the specimen which Fen- 
nex himself gave at sixty-five years of age, there ap- 
peared to be much reason in his assertion. Of all the 
players Fennex had ever seen (for some partiality for 
by-gone days we must of course allow) none elicited his 
notes of admiration like Beldham. We cannot com- 
pare a man who played underhand with those who are 
formed on overhand bowling. Still there is reason to 
believe what Mr. Ward and others have told us, that 



BELDHAM f. BROWNE. 75 

Beldham had that genius for cricket, that wonderful 
eye (although it failed him very early), and quickness 
of hand, that would have made him a great player in 
any age. 

Beldham related to us, in 1838, and that with no 
little nimbleness of hand and vivacity of eye, while he 
suited the action to the word with a bat of his own 
manufacture, how he had drawn forth the plaudits of 
Lords as he hit round and helped on the bowling of 
Browne, of Brighton, even faster than before, though 
the good men of Brighton thought that no one could 
stand against him, and Browne had thought to bowl 
Beldham off his legs. This match of Hants against 
England in 1819 Fennex was fond of describing, and 
certainly it gives some idea of what Beldham could do. 
" Osbaldeston," said Mr. Ward, " with his tremen- 
dously fast bowling, was defying every one at single 
wicket, and he and Lambert challenged Mr. E. H. 
Budd with three others. Just then I had seen Browne's 
swift bowling, and a hint from me settled the match. 
Browne was engaged, and Osbaldeston was beaten with 
his own weapons." A match was now made to give 
Browne a fair trial, and " we were having a social 
glass," said Fennex, "and talking over with Beldham 
the match of the morrow at the ' Green Man/ when 
Browne came in, and told Beldham, with as much sin- 
cerity as good-humor, that he should soon send his 
stumps a-flying." " Hold there," said Beldham, fin- 



76 THE CKICKET FIELD. 

gering his bat, " you will be good enough to allow me 
this bit of wood, won't you ? " " Certainly, " said 
Browne. " Quite satisfied," answered Beldham, '* so 
to-morrow you shall see." " Seventy- two runs," said 
Fennex, and the score book attests his accuracy, ""was 
Beldham' s first and only innings," and Beagley also 
joined with Fennex, and assured us, that he never saw 
a more complete triumph of a batsman over a bowler. 
Nearly every ball was cut or slipped away till Browne 
hardly dared to bowl within his reach. 

We desire not to qualify the praises of Beldham, but 
when we hear that he was unrivalled in elegant and 
brilliant hitting, and in that wonderful versatility that 
cut indifferently, quick as lightning, all round him, we 
cannot help remarking, that such bowling as that of 
Redgate or Wisden renders imperatively necessary a 
severe style of defence, and an attitude of cautious 
watchfulness, that must render the batsman not quite 
such a picture for the artist as might be seen in the 
days of Beldham and Lord F. Beauclerk. 

So far we have traced the diffusion of the game and 
the degrees of proficiency attained to the beginning of 
the present century. To sum up the evidence, by the 
year 1800, cricket had become the pastime even of the 
common people in Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, and 
Kent ; and had been introduced into the adjoining 
counties, and though we cannot trace its continuity 
beyond Rutlandshire and Burley Park, certainly it had 



BELDHAM V, BROWNE. 77 

been long familiar to the men of Leicester and of Not- 
tingham and Sheffield. That, in point of skill, Field- 
ing, generally, was already as good, and quite as much 
valued in a match as it has been since ; and Wicket- 
keeping in particular had been ably executed by Sueter, 
for he could stump off Brett, whose pace Nyren, ac- 
quainted as he was with all the bowlers to the days of 
Lillywhite, called quite of the steam-engine power, 
albeit no wicket-keeper could shine like Wenman or 
Box, except with the regularity of overhand bowling* ; 
and already Bowlers had attained by bias and quick 
delivery all the excellence which underhand bowling 
admits. Still, as regards Batting, the very fact that 
the stumps remained six inches wide, by twenty- two 
inches in height, undeniably proves that the secret of 
success was limited to comparatively a small number of 
players. 



78 



CHAP. V. 

THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS OF THE PRESENT CENTURY. 

Before this century was one year old, David Harris, 
Harry Walker, Purchase, Aylward, and Lumpy had 
left the stage, and John Small, instead of hitting bad 
balls whose stitches would not last a match, had learnt 
to make commodities so good that Clout's and Duke's 
were mere toyshop in comparison. Noah Mann was 
the Caldecourt, or umpire, of the day, and Harry 
Bentley also, when he did not play. Five years more 
saw nearly the last of Earl Winchelsea, Sir Horace 
Mann, Earl Darnley, and Lord Yarmouth ; still Surrey 
had a generous friend in Mr. Laurell, Hants in Mr. T. 
Smith, and Kent in the Honorables H. and J. TufFton. 
The Pavilion at Lord's, then and since 1787 on the 
site of Dorset Square, was attended by Lord Frederick 
Beauclerk, then a young man of four-and-twenty, the 
Honorables Colonel Bligh, General Lennox, H. and J. 
TufFton, and A. Upton. Also, there were usually 
Messrs. B. Whitehead, G. Leycester, S. Vigne, and F. 
Ladbroke. These were the great promoters of the 



DUKE OF YORK AND GEORGE IV. 79 

matches, and the first of the amateurs. Cricket, we 
have shown, was originally classed among the games of 
the lower orders ; so we find the yeomen infinitely su- 
perior to the gentlemen even before cricket had become 
by any means so much of a profession as it is now. 
Tom Walker, Beldham, John Wells, Fennex, Ham- 
mond, Robinson, Lambert, Sparkes, H. Bentley, Ben- 
nett, Freemantle, were the best professionals of the 
day. For it was seven or eight years later that E. H. 
Budd, and his unequal rival, Mr. Brand, and his sport- 
ing friend, Osbaldeston, as also that fine player, E. 
Parry, Esq., severally appeared; and later still, that 
Mr. Ward, Howard, Beagley, Thumwood, Caldecourt, 
Slater, Flavel, Ashby, Searle, and Saunders, succes- 
sively showed every resource of bias bowling to shorten 
the scores, and of fine hitting to lengthen them. By 
the end of these twenty years, all these distinguished 
players had taught a game in which the batting beat 
the bowling. Matches took up three days ; the wicket 
had been twice enlarged, once about 1814, and again 
about 1817; old Lord had tried his third, the present, 
ground; the Legs had taught the wisdom of playing 
rather for love than money ; slow coaches had given 
way to fast, long whist to short, and ultimately Lam- 
bert, John Wells, Howard, and Powell, Handed over 
the ball to Broadbridge and Lillywhite. 

Such is the scene, the characters, and the perform- 
ance. Matches in those days were more numerously 



80 1HE CRICKET FIELD. 

attended than now, said Mr, Ward : he thought that 
the old game was more attractive, because more busy, 
than the new. Tom Lord's flag was the well known 
telegraph that brought him in from three to four 
thousand sixpences at a match. John Groldham, the 
octogenarian inspector of Billingsgate, has seen the 
Duke of York and his adversary, Honorable Colonel 
Lennox, in the same game, and had the honor of play- 
ing with both, and the Prince Regent, too, in the 
White Conduit Fields, on which spot Mr. Goldham 
built his present house. Great matches, in those days, 
as in these, cost money. Six guineas to win and four 
to lose was the player's fee, or five and three if they 
lived in town. So as every match cost some seventy 
pounds, over the fire-place at Lord's you would see a 
Subscription List for Surrey against England, or for 
England against Kent, as the case might be, and find 
notices at Brookes's and other clubs. 

But what were the famed cricket Counties in these 
twenty years ? The glory of Kent had for a time de- 
parted. Time was when Kent could challenge England 
man for man, but now only with such odds as twenty- 
three to twelve. As to its wide extension, cricket ad- 
vanced but slowly compared with recent times. Still a 
small circle round London would comprise all the finest 
players. It was not till 1820 that Norfolk, forgetting 
its three Elevens beaten by Lord Frederick, again 
played Marylebone, and though three gentlemen were 



KENT IN THE SHADE. 81 

given and Fuller Pilch played — then a lad of seventeen 
years — Norfolk lost by 417 runs, including Mr. Ward's 
longest score on record, — 278. " But he was missed," 
said Mr. Budd, " the easiest possible catch before he 
had scored thirty." Kennington Oval, perhaps, was 
then all docks and thistles. Still Surrey was the first 
cricket county, and Mr. Laurell (Robinson was his 
keeper ; an awful man for poachers, 6 feet 1 inch, and 
16 stone, and strong in proportion), most generous of 
supporters, was not slow to give orders on Lord for 
golden guineas, when a Surrey man by catch, or in- 
nings, called forth applause. Of the same high order 
were Sir J. Cope of Bramshill Park and Mr. Barnett, 
the banker, promoter of the B. matches; Hon. D. Kin- 
naird, and Mr. W. Ward, who, by purchase of a lease, 
saved Lord's from building ground ; an act of gener- 
osity in which he imitated the good old Duke of 
Dorset, who, said Mr. Budd, " gave the ground called 
the Vine, at Sevenoaks, to the use of cricketers for 
ever." 

The good men of Surrey, in 1800, monopolized 
nearly all the play of England. Lord Frederick Beau- 
clerk and Hammond were the only All England players 
not Surrey men. 

Kent had then some civil contests — petty wars of 
single clans — but no county match ; and their great 
friend, Ii. Whitehead, Esq., depended on the M.C.C. 
for his finest games. The game had become a profes- 



82 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

sion : a science to the gentlemen, and an art or 
handicraft to the players ; and Farnham found in 
London the best market for its cricket as for its 
hops. The best Kent play was displayed at Rochester, 
and yet more at Woolwich, but chiefly among our 
officers, whose bats were bought in London, not at 
Sevenoaks. Games reflecting none such honor to the 
county as when the Earls of Thanet and of Darnley 
brought their own tenantry to Lord's or Dartford Brent, 
armed with the native willow wood of Kent. So the 
Honorables H. and A. TufFton were obliged to yield to 
the altered times, and play two-and-twenty men where 
their noble father, the Earl of Thanet, had won with 
eleven. 6i Thirteen to twenty-three was the number we 
enjoyed/' said Sparkes, " for with thirteen good men 
well-placed, and the bowling good, we did not want 
their twenty-three. A third man on, and a forward 
point, or kind of middle wicket, with slow bowling, or 
an extra slip with fast, made a very strong field : the 
Kent men were sometimes regularly pounded." 

In 1805, we find a curious match : the " twelve best 
against twenty-three next best." Lord Frederick was 
the only amateur among the former ; but Barton, one 
of the " next best " among the latter, proved worth 
100 runs ! Mr. Budd first appeared at Lord's in 
1808, and was among the longest scorers from the very 
first. 

The Homerton Club also furnished an annual match : 



MR. E. H. BTJDD AND LAMBERT. 83 

still all within the sound of Bow bells. " To forget 
Homerton," said Mr. Ward, " were to ignore Mr. 
Vigne, our wicket-keeper, but one of very moderate 
powers. Hammond was the best we ever had. He 
played till his sixtieth year ; but Browne and Osbald- 
estone put all wicket-keeping to the rout. Hammond's 
great success was in the days of slow bowling. John 
Wells and Howard were the two best fast bowlers, though 
Powell was very true. Osbaldestone beat his side with 
byes and slips — thirty byes in the B. match." Few 
men could hit him before wicket ; whence the many 
single wicket-matches he plaved ; but Mr. Ward put an 
end to his reign by finding out Browne of Brighton. 
Beagley said of Browne, as the players now say of Mr. 
Fellows, they had no objection to him when the ground 
was smooth. 

The Homerton Club also boasted of Mr. Ladbroke, 
one of the great promoters of matches, as well as the 
late Mr. Aislaby, always fond of the game, but all his 
life " too big to play," — the remark by Lord . Frederick 
of Mr. Ward, which, being repeated, did no little 
to develop the latent powers of that most efficient 
player. 

The Montpelier Club, also, with men given, annually 
played Marylebone. 

Lord Frederick, in 1803, gave a little variety to the 
matches by leading against Marylebone ten men of 
Leicester and Nottingham with the two Warsops. " T. 
Warsop," said Clarke, " was one of the best bowlers I 



84 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

ever knew." Clarke has also a high opinion of Lam- 
bert, from whom he learnt more *>f the game than from 
any other man. 

Lambert's bowling was like Mr. Budd's, against 
which I have often played*: • a high underhand delivery, 
slow, but rising very high, very accurately pitched, and 
turning in from leg stump. " About the year 1818, 
Lambert and I," said Mr. Budd, " attained to a kind 
of round-armed delivery (described as Clarke's), by 
which we rose decidedly superior to all the batsmen of 
the day. Mr. Ward could not play it, but he headed 
a party against us, and oar new bowling was ignored." 
Tom Walker and Lord Frederick were of the tediously 
slow school; Lambert and Budd several degrees faster. 
Howard and John Wells were the fast underhand 
bowlers. 

Lord Frederick was a very successful bowler, but was 
at last beat by men running into him. Sparks men- 
tioned another player, who brought very slow bowling 
to perfection, and beat in the same way. Beldham 
thought Mr. Budd's bowling better than Lord Fred- 
erick's. 

His Lordship is generally supposed to have been the 
best amateur of his day — an assertion I can by no 
means reconcile with acknowledged facts ; for Mr. 
Budd made the best average, though usually placed 
against Lambert's bowling, and playing almost exclu- 
sively in the great matches. Mr. Budd was a much 



MR. E. H. BTJDD AND LAMBERT, 85 

more powerful hitter. Lord Frederick said, " Budd 
always wanted to win the game off a single ball : " 
Beldham observed, '" if Mr. Budd would not hit so 
eagerly, he would be the finest player in all England." 
When I knew him, his hitting was quite safe play. 

But since Mr. Budd had the largest average in spite 
of his hitting, Beldham becomes a witness in his favor. 
Mr. Budd measured Rve feet ten inches, and w r eighed 
twelve stone, very clean made and powerful, with an 
eye singularly keen, and great natural quickness, being 
one of the fastest runners of his day. He stood 
usually at middle wicket. I never saw safer hands at 
a catch ; and I have seen him very quick at stumping 
out. But Lord Frederick could not take every part of 
the field ; but was always short slip, and not one of the 
very best. Mr. Budd hit well with the wrist. At 
Woolwich he hit a volley to long field for nine, though 
Parry threw it in. He also hit out of Lord's old 
ground. " Lord had said he would forfeit twenty-five 
guineas if any one thus proved his ground too small ; 
so we all crowded around Budd," said Beldham, " and 
told him what he might claim. ' Well, then,' he said, 
* I claim it, and give it among the players.' But Lord 
was shabby, and would not pay." Mr. Budd is now 
in his sixty-sixth year, still I have never seen the 
country Eleven that could spare him yet. 

Lambert was also good at every point. In batting, 
he was a bold, forward player. He stood with left foot 
8 



86 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

a yard in advance, swaying his bat and body as if to 
attain momentum, and reaching forward almost to 
where the ball must pitch. 

Lambert's chief point was to take the ball at the 
pitch and drive it powerfully away, "and," said Mr. 
Budd, " to a slow bowler his return was so quick and 
forcible, that his whole manner was really intimidating 
to a bowler." Every one remarked how completely 
Lambert seemed master of the ball. Usually the bowler 
appears to attack, and the batsman to defend ; but 
Lambert seemed always on the attack, and the bowler 
at his mercy, and "hit," said Beldham, "what no one 
else could meddle with." 

Lord Frederick was formed on Beldham's style. Mr. 
Budd's position at the wicket was much the same : the 
right foot placed as usual, but the left rather behind, 
and nearly a yard apart, so that instead of the upright 
bat and figure of Pilch, the bat was drawn across, and 
the figure hung away from the wicket. This was a 
mistake. Before the ball could be played, Mr. Budd 
was too good a player not to be up, like Pilch, and 
play well over his off stump. Still Mr. Budd explained 
to me that this position of the left foot was just where 
one naturally shifts it to have room for a cut ; so this 
strange attitude was supposed to favor their fine off 
hits. I say Off hit, because the Cut did not properly 
belong to either of these players : Robinson and Saun- 
ders were the men to cut, — cutting balls clean away 



GENTLEMEN V. PLAYERS. 87 

from the bails, though Robinson had a maimed hand, 
burnt when a child : the handle of his bat was grooved 
to fit his stunted fingers. Talking of his bat, the 
players once discovered by measurement it was beyond 
the statute width, and would not pass through the 
standard. So, unceremoniously, a knife was produced, 
and the bat reduced to rather its just than fair propor- 
tions. "Well," said Robinson* "I'll pay you off for 
spoiling my bat;" and sure enough he did, hitting 
tremendously, and making one of his largest innings, 
which were often near a hundred runs. 

During these twenty years, Hampshire, like Kent, 
had lost its renown, but simply because Hambledon 
was now no more ; nor did Surrey and Hampshire any 
longer count as one. To confirm our assertion that 
Farnham produced the players, — for in 1808, Surrey 
had played and beat England three times in one sea- 
son, and from 1820 to 1825 Godalming is mentioned 
as the most powerful antagonist ; but, whether called 
Godalming or Surrey, we must not forget that the 
locality is the same — 'we observe, that, in 1821* M. C. 
C. plays " The Three Parishes," namely, Godalming, 
Farnham, and Hartley Row, which parishes, after rear- 
ing the finest cotemporaries of Beldham, then boasted 
a later race of players in Flavel, Searle, Howard, Thum- 
wood, Mathews. 

■ "About this time (July 23, 1821)," said Beldham, 
" we played the Coronation Match; ■ M. C. C. against 



88 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

the Players of England.' We scored 278 and only six 
wickets down, when the game was given up. I was 
hurt and could not run my notches ; still James Bland, 
and the other Legs, begged of me to take pains, for it 
was no sporting match, ' any odds and no takers ; ' and 
they wanted to shame the gentlemen against wasting 
their (the Legs') time in the same way another time." 

But the day for Hampshire, as for Kent, was doomed 
to shine again. Fennex, Small, the Walkers, J. Wells, 
and Hammond, in time drop off from Surrey, — and 
about the same time, 1815, Caldecourt, Holloway, 
Beagley, Thumwood, Shearman, Howard, Mr. Ward, 
and Mr. Knight, restore the balance of power for 
Hants, as afterwards, Broadbridge and Lilly white for 
Sussex. 

"In 1817, we went," said Mr. Budd, "with Os- 
baldestone to play twenty-two of Nottingham. In that 
match Clarke played. In common with others I lost 
my money, and was greatly disappointed at the termin- 
ation. One paid player was accused of selling, and 
never employed after. The concourse of people was 
very great : these were the days of the Luddites 
(rioters), and the magistrates warned us, that, unless 
we would stop our game at seven o'clock, they could 
not answer for keeping the peace. At seven o'clock 
we stopped, and simultaneously the thousands who 
lined the ground began to close in upon us. Lord 
Frederick lost nerve and was very much alarmed ; but 



GREAT SINGLE- WICKET MATCH. ti\) 

I said they didn't want to hurt us. " No ; they simply 
came to have a look at the eleven men who ventured to 
play two for one." His Lordship broke his finger, and, 
batting with one hand, scored only eleven funs. Nine 
men, the largest number perhaps on record, are recorded 
as "caught by Budd." 

Just before the establishment of Mr. Will's round- 
hand bowling, as if to prepare the way, Ashby came 
forth with an unusual bias, but no great pace. Sparkes 
bowled in the same style ; as also Matthews and Mr. 
Jenner somewhat later. Still the batsmen were full as 
powerful as ever, reckoning Saunders, Searle, Beagley, 
Messrs. Ward, Kingscote, Knight ; Suffolk became very 
strong with Pilch, the Messrs. Blake, and others, of the 
famous Bury Club ; while Slater, Lilly white, King, 
and the Broadbridges, raised the name of Midhurst and 
of Sussex. 

Against such batsmen every variety of underhand 
delivery failed to maintain the balance of the game, till 
J. Broadbridge and Lillywhite, after many protests and 
discussions, succeeded in establishing what long was 
called " the Sussex Bowling." 

"About 1820," said Mr. Budd, "at our anniversary 
dinner (three-guinea tickets) at the Clarendon, Mr. 
Ward asked me if I had said I would play any man in 
England at single wicket, without fieldsmen. An 
affirmative produced a match p. p. for fifty guineas. 
On the day appointed Mr. Brand proved my opponent. 
8* 



90 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

He was a fast bowler. I went in first, and, scoring 
seventy runs with some severe blows on the legs, — 
nankeen knees and silk stockings, and no pads in those 
days, — I consulted a friend and knocked down my own 
wicket, lest the match should last to the morrow, and I 
be unable to play. Mr. Brand was out without a run ! 
I went in again, and making up the 70 to 100, I once 
more knocked down my own wicket, and once more my 
opponent failed to score ! ! 

The flag was flying — the signal of a great match — 
and a large concourse were assembled, and considering 
Mr. Ward, a good judge, made the match, this is prob- 
ably the most hollow beat on record. 

Osbaldestone's victory was even more satisfactory. 
Lord Frederick with Beldham made a p. p. match with 
Osbaldestone and Lambert. " On the day named," said 
Budd, " I went to Lord Frederick, representing my 
friend was too ill to stand, and asked him to put off the 
match. " No ; play or pay," said his Lordship, quite 
inexorable. "Never mind," said Osbaldestone, "I 
won't forfeit : Lambert may beat them both, and if he 
does the fifty guineas shall be his." I asked Lambert 
how he felt. "Why," said he, "they are anything 
but safe." His Lordship wouldn't hear of it. " Non- 
sense," he said, " you can't mean it." " Yes ; play or 
pay, my Lord, we are in earnest, and shall claim the 
stakes ! " and in fact Lambert did beat them both. 
For to play such a man when on his mettle was rather 



osbaldestone's match. 91 

discouraging, and " he did make desperate exertion : " 
said Beldham, " Once he rushed up after his ball, and 
Lord Frederick was caught so near his bat that he lost 
his temper, and said it was not fair play. Of course, all 
hearts were with Lambert.' ' 

" Osbaldestone's mother sat by in her carriage, and 
enjoyed the match, and then," said Beldham, " Lam- 
bert was called to the carriage and bore away a paper 
parcel : some said it was a gold watch, — some, bank 
notes. Trust Lambert to keep his own secrets. We 
were all curious, but no one ever knew." 



92 THE CRICKET FIELD. 



CHAP. VI. 

A DARK CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OE CRICKET. 

The lovers of cricket may congratulate themselves at 
the present day that matches are made at cricket, as at 
chess, rather for love and the honor of victory than for 
money. 

It is now many years since Lord's was frequented 
by men with book and pencil, betting as openly and 
professionally as in *the ring at Epsom, and ready to 
deal in the odds with any and every person of specu- 
lative propensities. Far less satisfactory was the state 
of things with which Lord F. Beauclerk and Mr. Ward 
had to contend, to say nothing of the earlier days of 
the Earl of Winchelsea and Sir Horace Mann. As to 
the latter period, " Old Nyren " bewails its evil doings. 
He speaks of one who had "the trouble of proving 
himself a rogue," and also of " the legs at Marylebone," 
who tried, for once in vain, to corrupt some primitive 
specimens of Hambledon innocence. He says, also, 
the grand matches of his day were always made for 
5001. a side. Add to this the fact that the bets were 



SAD DOINGS. 93 

in proportion, that Jim and Joe Bland, of turf notoriety, 
Dick Whitlom, of Covent Garden, Simpson, a gaming- 
house keeper, and Toll, of Isher, as regularly attended 
at a match as Crockford and Gully at Epsom and 
Ascot ; and the idea that all the Surrey and Hampshire 
rustics should either want or resist strong temptations 
to sell is not to be entertained for a moment. The 
constant habit of betting will take the honesty out of 
any man. A half-crown sweepstakes, or betting such 
odds as lady's long kids to gentleman's short ditto, 
is all very fair sport ; but if a man after years of high 
betting can still preserve the fine edge and tone of 
honest feeling, he is indeed a wonder. To bet on a 
certainty all admit is swindling. If so, to bet where 
you feel it a certainty must be very bad moral practice. 
"If gentlemen wanted to bet," said Beldham, "just 
under the pavilion sat men ready with money down to 
give and take the current odds, and by far the best 
men to bet with, because if they lost it was all in the 
way of business : they paid their money and did not 
grumble." Still they had all sorts of tricks to make 
their betting safe. " One artifice," said Mr. Ward, 
" was to keep a player out of the way by a false report 
that his wife was dead." Then these men would come 
down to the Green Man and Still, and drink with us, 
and always said that those who backed us, or " the 
nol5s," as they called them, sold the matches ; and so, 
sir, as you are going the round beating up the quarters 



94 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

of the old players, you will find some to persuade you 
this is true. But don't believe it. That any gentleman, 
in my day, ever put himself into the power of these 
blacklegs by selling matches, I can't credit. Still, one 
day I thought I would try how far these tales were true. 
So, going down into Kent with " one of high degree," 
he said to me, " Will, if this match is won, I lose a 
hundred pounds." " Well," said I, " my Lord, you 
and I could order that." He smiled as if nothing were 
meant, and talked of something else ; and, as luck 
would have it, he and I were in together, and brought 
up the score between us, though every run seemed to 
me like " a guinea out of his Lordship's pocket." 

In those days foot races were very common. Lord 
Frederick and Mr. Budd were first-rate runners, and 
bets were freely laid. So, one day, old Fennex laid a 
trap for the gentlemen : he brought up to act the part 
of some silly conceited youngster, with his pockets full 
of money, a first-rate runner out of Hertfordshire. 
This soft young gentleman ran a match or two with 
some known third-rate men, and seemed to win by a 
neck, and no pace to spare. Then he calls out, "I'll 
run any man on the ground for 25Z., money down." 
A match was quickly made, and money laid on pretty 
thick on Fennex's account. Some said, " Too bad to 
win of such a green young fellow ; " others said, " He's 
old enough — serve him right." So the laugh was finely 
against those who were taken in ; " the green one " ran 
away like a hare ! 



THE NOTTINGHAM MATCH. 95 

" You see, sir," said one fine old man, with brilliant 
eye and quickness of movement, that showed his right 
hand had not yet forgot its cunning, " matches were 
bought, and matches were sold, and gentlemen who 
meant honestly lost large sums of money, till the rogues 
beat themselves at last. They overdid it ; they spoilt 
their own trade ; and, as I told one of them, a knave 
and a fool makes a bad partnership : so, you and your- 
self will never prosper. Well, surely there was robbery 
enough, and not a few of the great players earned 
money to their own disgrace ; but, if you '11 believe me, 
there was not half the selling there was said to be. 
Yes, I can guess, sir, much as you -have been talking to 
all the old players over this good stuff (pointing to the 
brandy and water I had provided,) no doubt you have 

heard that B sold as bad as the rest. I'll tell the 

truth : one match up the country I did sell, — a match 
made by Mr. Osbaldestone at Nottingham. I had been 
sold out of a match just before, and lost 101., and 
happening to hear it I joined two others of our eleven 
to sell, and get back my money. I won 10Z. exactly, 
and of this roguery no one ever suspected me ; but 
many was the time I have been blamed for selling when 
as innocent as a babe. In those days when so much 
money was on the matches, every man who lost his 
money would blame some one. Then if A missed a 
catch, or B made no runs, — and where 's the player 
whose hand is always in ? — that man was called a rogue 



96 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

directly. So when a man was doomed to lose his char- 
acter, and bear all the smart, there was the more 
temptation to do like others, and after * the kicks ' to 
come in for * the halfpence.' But I am an old man now, 
and heartily sorry I have been ever since, because, but 
for that Nottingham match, I could have said, with a 
clear conscience, to a gentleman like you, that all that 
was said was false, and I never sold a match in my life ; 
but now I can't. But if I had fifty sons, I would never 
put one of them, for all the games in the world, in the 
way of the- roguery that I have witnessed. The temp- 
tation really was very great, — too great by far for any 
poor man to be exposed to, — no richer than ten shil- 
lings a week, let alone harvest time. I never told you 
the way I first was brought to London. I was a lad of 
eighteen at this Hampshire village, and Lord Winchel- 
sea had seen us play among ourselves, and watched the 
match with the Hambledon Club on Broad-halfpenny, 
when I scored forty-three against David Harris, and 
ever so many of the runs against David's bowling, and 
no one ever could manage David before. So, next 
year, in the month of March, I was down in the 
meadows, when a gentleman came across the field with 
Farmer Hilton, and thought I, all in a minute, now this 
is something about cricket. Well, at last it was settled. 
I was to play Hampshire against England, at London, 
in White Conduit-Fields ground, in the month of June. 
For three months I did nothing but think about that 



PLAYERS AT THE GREEN MAN. 97 

match. Tom Walker was to travel up from this country, 
and I agreed to go with him, and found myself at last, 
with a merry company of cricketers, all old men, whose 
names I had ever heard as foremost in the game — met 
together, drinking, card-playing, betting, and singing 
at the Green Man (that was the great cricketer's house), 
in Oxford Street, — no man without his wine, I assure 
you, and such suppers as three guineas a game to lose, 
and five to win (that was then the pay for players) 
could never pay for long. To go to London by a 
waggon, earn five guineas three or four times told, and 
come back with half the money in your pocket to the 
plough again, was all very well talking. You know 
what young folk are, sir, when they get together : 
mischief brews stronger in large quantities : so many 
spent all their earnings, and were soon glad to make 
more money some other way. Hundreds of pounds 
were bet upon the great matches, and other wagers laid 
on the scores of the finest players, and that too by men 
who had a book for every race, and every match in the 
sporting world : men who lived by gambling ; and as to 
honesty, gambling and honesty don't often go together. 
What was easier, then, than for such sharp gentlemen 
to mix with the players, take advantage of their diffi- 
culties, and say, your backers, my Lord this, and the 
Duke of that, sell matches and overrule all your good 
play, so why shouldn't you have a share of the plunder? 
That was their constant argument. Serve them as they 
9 



98 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

serve you. You have heard of Jim Bland, the turfs- 
man, and his brother Joe — two nice boys. "When 
Jemmy Dawson was hanged for poisoning the horse, 
the Blands never felt safe till the rope was round Daw- 
son's neck, and, to keep him quiet, persuaded him to 
the last hour that they dared not hang him : and a 
certain nobleman had a reprieve in his pocket. Well, 
one day in April, Joe Bland found me out in this parish, 
and tried his game on with me. ' You may make a 
fortune,' he said, ' if you will listen to me : so much 
for the match with Surrey, and so much more for the 
Kent match — ' ' Stop,' said I : ' Mr. Bland, you talk 
too fast ; I am rather too old for this trick ;. you never 
buy the same man but once : if their lordships ever 
sold at all, you would peach upon them if ever after 
they dared to win. You '11 try me once, and then you '11 
have me in a line like him of the mill last year.' No, 
sir, a man was a slave when once he sold to these folk : 
fool and knave aye go together. Still they found fools 
enough for their purpose ; but rogues can never trust 
each other. One day a sad quarrel arose between two 
of them ; that opened the gentlemen's eyes too wide to 
close again to these practices. Two very big rogues at 
Lord's fell a quarrelling, and blows were given ; a 
crowd drew round, and the gentlemen ordered them 
both into the pavilion. When the one began, ' You had 
20Z. to lose the Kent match, bowling leg long hops and 
missing catches.' ' And you were paid to lose at Swaff- 



TREASON OUT. 99 

ham — ' Why did that game with Surrey turn about — 
three runs to get, and you didn't make them ? ' Angry 
words came out fast, and, when they are circumstantial 
and square with previous suspicions, they are proofs as 
strong as holy writ. In one single- wicket match," he 
continued, " and those were always great matches for 
the sporting men, because usually you had first-rate 
men on each side, and their merits known ; dishonesty 
was as plain as this : just as a player was coming in 
(John B. will confess this, if you talk of the match) he 
said to me, ' You'll let me score five or six, for appear- 
ances, won't you, for I am not going to make many if I 
can ? ' ' Yes,' I said, ' you rogue, you shall, if I can not 
help it.' But when a game was all but won, and the 
odds heavy, and all one way, it was cruel to see how 
the fortune of the day then would change about. In 
that Kent match, — you can turn to it in your book 
(Bentley's scores), played 28th July, 1807, on Pennen- 
den Heath, — I and Lord Frederick had scored sixty- 
one, and thirty remained to win, and six of the best 
men in England went out for eleven runs. Well, sir, I 
lost some money by that match, and as seven of us 
were walking homewards to meet a coach, a gentleman 
who had backed the match drove by and said, ' Jump 
up, my boys, we have all lost together. I need not 
mind if I hire a pair of horses extra next town, for I 
have lost money enough to pay for twenty pair or more. 
Well, thought I, as I rode along, you have rogues 



100 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

enough in your carriage now, if the truth were told, 
I '11 answer for it ; and one of them let out the secret 
some ten years after. But, sir, I can't help laughing 
when I tell you, once there was a single-wicket match 
played at Lord's, and a man on each side was paid to 
lose. One was bowler, and the other batsman, when 
the game came to a near point. I knew their politics, 
the rascals, and saw in a minute how things stood ; and 
how I did laugh, to be sure : for seven balls together, 
one would not bowl straight, and the other would not 
hit ; but at last a straight ball must come, and down 
went the wicket." 

From other information received, I could tell this 
veteran that, even in his much-repented Nottingham 
match, his was not the only side that had men resolved 
to lose. The match was sold for Nottingham too, and 
that with less success, for Nottingham won : an event 
the less difficult to accomplish, as Lord Frederick Beau- 
clerk broke a finger in an attempt to stop a designed 
and wilful overthrow ! and played the second innings 
with one hand. 

It is true, Clarke, who played in the match, thought 
all was fair : still, he admits, he heard one Nottingham 
man accused on the field, by his own side, of foul play. 
This confirms the evidence of the Bev. C. W., no slight 
authority in Nottingham matches, who said he was 
cautioned before the match that all would not be 
fair. 



NOTTINGHAM MATCH SOLD. 101 

" This practice of selling matches," said Beldham, 
" produced strange things sometimes. Once, I remem- 
ber, England was playing Surrey, and, in my judgment, 
Surrey had the best side ; still I found the Legs were 
betting seven to four against Surrey ! This time they 
were done ; for they betted on the belief that some 
Surrey men ha# sold the match, but Surrey played to 
win. 

Crockford used to be seen about Lord's, and Mr. 
Gully also occasionally, but only for society of sporting 
men : they did not understand the game, and I never 
saw them bet. Mr. Gully was often talking to me 
about the game for one season ; but I could never put 
any sense into him ! He knew plenty about fighting, 
and afterwards of horse-racing ; but a man cannot 
learn the odds of cricket unless he is something of a 
player.'' 



9* 



102 



CHAP. VII. % 

THE SCIENCE AND ART OE BATTING-. 

A writer in " Blackwood " once attributed the success 
of his magazine to the careful exclusion of every bit of 
science, or reasoning, above half an inch long. The 
Cambridge Professors do not exclusively represent the 
mind of Parker's Piece, so away with the stiffness of 
analysis and the mysteries of science : the laws of 
dynamics might puzzle, and the very name of physics 
alarm, many an able-bodied cricketer ; so, invoking the 
genius of our mother tongue, let us exhibit science in 
its more palatable form. 

All the balls that can be bowled may, for all prac- 
tical purposes, be reduced to a few simple classes, and 
plain rules given for all and each. There are what are 
called good balls, and bad balls. The former, good 
lengths, and straight, while puzzling to the eye ; the 
latter, bad lengths, and wide, while easy to see and to 
hit. 

But, is not a good hand and eye quite enough, with 
a little practice, without all this theory? Do you 



LENGTH BALLS. 103 

ignore the Pilches and the Parrs, who have proved 
famous hitters from their own sense alone ? The ques- 
tion is not how many have succeeded, but how many- 
more have failed. Cricket by nature is like learning 
from a village dame ; it leaves a great deal to be 
untaught before the pupil makes a good scholar. If 
you have Caldecourt's, Bayley's, or Dakin's instruc- 
tions, viva voce, why not on paper also? What though 
many excellent musicians do not know a note, every 
good musician will bear witness that the consequence 
of Nature's teaching is, that men form a vicious habit 
almost impossible to correct, a lasting bar to brilliant 
execution. And why? — because the piano or the 
violin leaves no dexterity or rapidity to spare. The 
muscles act freely in one way only, in every other way 
with loss of power. So with batting. A good ball 
requires all the power and energy of the man ! And as 
with riding, driving, rowing, or every other exercise, 
it depends on a certain form, attitude, or position, 
whether this power be forthcoming or not. 

The scope for useful instructions for forming good 
habits of hitting before their place is pre- occupied with 
bad- — for " there's the rub" — is very great indeed. If 
Pilch, and Clarke, and Lillywhite, averaging fifty years 
each, are still indifferent to pace in bowling, — and if 
Mr. Ward, as late as 1844, scored forty against Mr. 
Kirwan's swiftest bowling, while some of the most 
active young men, of long experience in cricket, are 



104 THE CKICKET FIELD. 

wholly unequal to the task,— then is it undeniable that 
a batsman may. form a certain invaluable habit, which 
youth and strength cannot always give, nor age and 
inactivity entirely take away. 

The following are simple rules for forming correct 
habits of play ; for adding the judgment of the veteran 
to the activity of youth, or putting an old head on 
young shoulders, and teaching the said young shoul- 
ders not to get in each other's way. 

All balls that can be bowled are reducible to "length 
balls " and " not lengths." 

Not lengths are the toss, the tice, the half volley, the 
long hop, and ground balls. 

These are not length balls, not pitched at that critical 
length which puzzles the judgment as to whether to 
play forward or back, as will presently be explained. 
These are all " bad balls," and among good players 
considered certain hits, though, from the delusive con- 
fidence they inspire, sometimes they are bowled with 
success against the best players. 

These not lengths, therefore, being the easiest to play, 
as requiring only hand and eye, but little judgment, 
are the best for a beginner to practise ; so we will set 
the tyro in a proper position to play them with cer- 
tainty and effect. 

Position. — Look at any professional player, — ob- 
serve how he stands and holds his bat. Much, very 
much, depends on position, — so look at the figure of 



SIMPLE EULES. 105 



v 



ilch. This is substantially the attitude of every good 
oatsman. Some think he should bend the right knee a 
little ; but an anatomist reminds me that it is when the 
limb is straight that the muscles are relaxed, and most 
ready for sudden action. Various as attitudes appear 
to the casual observer, all coincide in the main points 
imarked in the figure of Pilch in our frontispiece. For 
iall good players, — 

1st. Stand with the right foot just within the line; 
further in would limit the reach and endanger the 
wicket, and further out would endanger stumping. 

2dly. All divide their weight between their two feet, 
though making the right leg more the pillar and sup- 
port, the left being rather lightly placed, and more 
ready to move on, off, or forward, and this we will call 
the balance foot. 

3dly. All stand as close as they can without being 
before the wicket, otherwise the bat cannot be upright, 
nor can the eye command a line from the bowler's 
hand. 

4thly. All stand at guard as upright as is easy to 
them. We say easy, not to forbid a slight stoop, — 
the attitude of extreme caution. Height is a great 
advantage, " and a big man," says Dakin, " is foolish 
to make himself into a little man." If the eye is low 
you cannot have the commanding sight, nor, as players 
say, " see as much of the game," as if you hold up your 
head, and look well at the bowler. 



106 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

5thly. All stand easy, and hold the bat lightly, yet 
firmly in their hands. However rigid your muscles, 
you must relax them, as already observed, before you 
can start into action. Rossi, the sculptor, made a 
beautiful marble statue of a batsman at guard, for the 
late Mr. William Ward, who said, " You are no 
cricketer, Mr. Sculptor ; the wrists are too rigid, and 
hands too much clenched." 

Such is your position at guard, and when I tell you 
what you have to do, you will readily understand the 
meaning of fig. 1., " Receiving the Ball," or " Pre- 
paring for Action," in the next page. 

Meet the ball with as full a bat as the case admits. 
Consider the full force of this rule. 

1st. Meet the ball. The bat must strike the ball, 
not the ball the bat. Even if you block, you can block 
hard, and the wrists may do a little, so with a good 
player this rule admits of no exception. Young players 
must not think I mean a flourish, but an exact move- 
ment of the bat only at the latest possible instant. In 
playing back to a bail ball, a good player meets the 
ball, and plays it with a resolute movement of arm and 
wrist. Pilch is not caught in the attitude of what 
some call Hanging guard, letting the ball hit his bat 
dead, once in a season. 

2dly. With a full bat. A good player has never less 
wood than 21 inches by 4.£ inches before his wicket as 
he plays the ball, a bad player has rarely more than a 



STRAIGHT PLAT PUZZLES BOWLERS. 



07 



Fig. 1. 




Preparing for Action.* 

bat's width alone. Remember the old rule, to keep 
the left shoulder over the ball, and left elbow well up. 
Good players must avoid doing this in excess, and 
playing from leg to off across the line of the ball in 



* The toes are too much before Wicket, and foot hardly 
within the crease. Foreshortening suits our illustration better 
than artistic effect. 



108 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

their over care to keep the shoulder over it. Fix a bat 
by pegs in the ground, and try to bowl the wicket 
down, and you will perceive what an unpromising 
antagonist this simple rule creates. I like to see a bat, 
as the ball is coming, hang perpendicular as a pendu- 
lum from the player's wrists. The best compliment 
ever paid me was this. " Whether you play forward 
or back, hitting or stopping, the wicket is always 
covered to the full measure of your bat." So said a 
friend well known in North Devon, whose effective 
bowling, combined with his name, has so often pro- 
voked the pun of " the falls of the Clyde." 

Herein, then, consists the great excellence of batting, 
in presenting the largest possible face of the bat to the 
ball. While the bat is descending on the ball, the ball 
may rise or turn, to say nothing of the liability of the 
hand to miss, and then the good player has always half 
the width of his bat, besides its height, to cover the 
deviation, whereas the cross player may err not only 
from the inaccuracy of hand and eye, but from the twist 
of the ball. 

And would you bring a full bat even to a toss ? 
Would you not cut it to the off or hit across to the on ? 

This question tries my rule very hard, certainly ; but 
though nothing less than a hit from a toss can satisfy a 
good player, still I have seen the most brilliant hitters, 
when a little out of practice, lose their wicket, or hit a 
catch from the edge of the bat, by this common custom 
of hitting across even to a toss or long hop. 



BAD BOWLING EFFECTIVE. 109 

To hit tosses is good practice, requiring good time 
and quick wrist play. If you see a man play stiff, and 
" up in a heap," a swift toss is worth trying. Bowlers 
should practise both toss and tice. 

We remember Wenman playing well against fine 
bowling ; an underhand bowler was put on, who bowled 
him with a toss, fourth ball. 

To play tosses, and ground balls, and hops, and 
every variety of loose bowling, by the rigid rules of 
straight and upright play, is a principle by which the 
old hands have often had a laugh at the young ones. 
Often have I been amused to see the wonder and disap- 
pointment occasioned, when some noted member of a 
University Eleven, or the Marylebone Club, from whom 
all expected, of course, the most tremendous hitting off 
" mere underhand bowling," has been easily disposed 
of by a toss or a ground ball, yclept a " sneak." 

A fast ball to the middle stump, however badly 
bowled, no player can afford to treat too easily. A ball 
that grounds more than once may turn more than once, 
and the bat, though properly 4J inches wide, is consid- 
erably reduced when used across wicket ; so never hit 
across wicket. To turn to loose bowling, and hit 
from leg stump square to the on side with full swing of 
the body, is very gratifying and very effective, and per- 
haps you may hit over the tent, or, as I once saw, into 
a neighbor's carriage ; but while the natives are marvel- 
10 



110 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

stricken, Caldecourt will shake his head, and inwardly 
grieve at folly so triumphant. 

This reminds me of a memorable match in 1834, of 
Oxford against Cowley, the village which fostered those 
useful members of university society, who, during the 
summer term, bowl at sixpences on stumps, sometimes 
eight hours a day, and have strength enough left at the 
end to win one sixpence more. 

The Oxonians, knowing the ground, or knowing 
their bowlers, scored above 200 runs in their first 
innings. Then Cowley grew wiser ; and even now a 
Cowley man will tell the tale how they put on one 
Tailor Humphreys to bowl twisting underhand sneaks, 
at which the Oxonians laughed, and called it " no 
cricket ; " but it actually levelled their wickets for 
fewer runs than were made against Bayley and Cobbett 
the following week. The Oxonians, too eager to score, 
and thinking it so easy, hit across, and did not play 
their usual game. 

Never laugh at bowling that takes wickets. Bowling 
that is bad, often, for that very reason, meets with 
batting that is worse. Nothing shows a thorough 
player more than playing with caution even badly 
pitched underhand bowling. 

One of the best judges of the game I ever knew was 
once offered by a fine hitter a bet that he could not, 
with his underhand bowling, make him " give a chance" 
in half an hour. 



BAD BOWLING EFFECTIVE. Ill 

" Then you know nothing of the game," was the 
reply ; " I would bowl you nothing but off tosses, 
which you must cut ; you would not cut those correctly 
for half an hour, for you could not use a straight bat 
once. Your bethought to be, — no chance before so 
many runs." 

Peter Heward, an excellent wicket-keeper of Leices- 
ter, — of the same day as Henry Davis, one of the finest 
and most graceful hitters ever seen, as Dakin or any 
midland player will attest, — once observed to me, 
" Players are apt to forget that a bad bowler may bowl 
one or two balls as well as the best ; so to make a 
good average you must always play the same guarded 
and steady game, and take care especially when late in 
the season." " Why late in the season ? " " Because 
the ground is damp and heavy — it takes the spring out 
of good bowling, and gives fast underhand bowling as 
many twists as it has bops, besides making it hang in 
the ground. This game is hardly worth playing, it is 
true ; but a man is but half a player who is only pre- 
pared for true ground." " We do not play cricket," 
he continued, " on billiard tables ; wind and weather 
and the state of the turf make all the difference. So, 
if you play to win, play the game that will carry you 
through, and that is a straight and upright game ; use 
your eyes well ; play not at the pitch, nor by the 
length, but always (what few men do) at the ball itself, 
and never hitting across wicket." 



112 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

Next as to the half-volley. This is the most delight- 
ful of all balls to hit, because it takes the right part of 
the bat, with all the quickness of its rise or rebound. 
Any player will show you what a half-volley is, and I 
presume that every reader has some* living lexicon to 
explain common terms. A half-volley, then, is very 
generally hit in the air, soaring far above every fields- 
man's head ; and to know the power of the bat, every 
hitter should learn so to hit at pleasure. Though as 
a rule, high hits make a low average. But I am now 
to speak only of hitting half-volleys along the ground. 

Every time you play forcibly at the pitch of a ball 
you have more or less of the half- volley ; so this is a 
materia] point in batting. The whole secret consists 
partly in timing your hit well, and partly in taking 
the ball at the right part of the rise, so as to play 
the ball down without wasting its force against the 
ground. 

Every player thinks he can hit a half-volley along 
the ground ; but if once you see it done by a really 
brilliant hitter, you will soon understand that such 
hitting admits of many degrees of perfection. You 
will also see that there is a certain way of feeling the 
ball on the bat, while you spring it away with an 
elastic impulse ; also, when the ball is quite within 
your reach, there is a certain smartness of hitting, the 
bat appearing to be loosely flung upon the ball, pro- 
ducing an astonishing effect ; for, the ball appears not 



THEORY OF HITTING. 113 

so much hit as shot away, with such speed as defies the 
fieldsman to cover it. 

Clean hitting requires a loose arm, the bat held 
firmly, but not clutched in the hand ; clumsy gloves are 
a sad hindrance, the hit is not half so crisp and smart ; 
the bat must be brought forward not only by the free 
swing of the arm working well from the shoulder, but 
also by the wrist. (Refer to Jig. 1. p. 107.) Here is 
the bat ready thrown back, and wrists proportionally 
bent ; from that position a hit is always assisted by 
wrists as well as arm. The effect of the wrist alone, 
slight as its power appears, is very material in hitting ; 
this probably arises from the greater precision and 
better time in which a wrist hit is commonly made. 

As to hard hitting, if two men have equal skill, the 
strong man will strike the harder blow. Many slight 
men drive a ball nearly as far as larger men, because 
they exert their force in a more skilful manner. We 
have seen a man six feet three inches in height, and of 
power in proportion, hit a ball tossed to him — not once 
or twice, but repeatedly — a hundred yards or more in 
the air. This, perhaps, is more than any light man 
could do. But " the best man at putting the stone 
and throwing a weight," observes a friend, " I ever 
saw, was a man of little more than ten stone. The 
application of a man's whole weight at the proper 
moment is the chief point in this as in wrestling, and 
so also is hard hitting. " 
10* 



114 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

The whirl of the bat may be accelerated by wrist, 
forearm, and shoulder, let each joint bear its proper 
part. 

Nuts fob, strong teeth. — All effective hits must 
be made with both hands and arms ; and, in order that 
both arms may apply their force, the point at which the 
object aimed at is struck should be opposite the middle 
of the body. 

Take a bat in your hand, poise the body as for a 
volley hit forward, the line from shoulder to shoulder 
being parallel with the line of the ball. Now whirl 
the bat in the line of the ball, and you will find that it 
reaches that part of its circle where it is perpendicular 
to the ground, — midway between the shoulders ; at 
that moment, the bat attains its greatest velocity, so 
then alone can the strongest hit be made. Moreover, 
a hit made at this moment, will drive the ball parallel 
to and skimming the ground. And if, in such a hit, 
the lower six inches of the bat's face strike the ball, 
the hit is properly called a " clean hit," being free from 
all imperfections. The same may be said of a horizontal 
hit, or cut. The bat should meet the ball when oppo- 
site the body. I do not say that every hit should be 
made in this manner ; I only say that a perfect hit can 
be made in no other, and that it should be the aim of 
the batsman to attain this position of the body as often 
as he can. Nor is this mere speculation on the 
scientific principle of batting ; it arises from actual 



CLEAN HITTING. 115 

observation of the movements of the best batsmen. 
All really good hitters make their hits just at the 
moment when the ball is opposite the middle of their 
body. Watch any fine off hitter. If he hits to mid- 
wicket, his breast is turned to mid-wicket ; if he hits, 
I mean designedly, to point, his breast is turned to 
point. I do not say that his hits would always go to 
those parts of the field because the speed and spin of 
the ball will always, to a greater or less degree, prevent 
its going in the precise direction of the hit ; but I only 
say that the ball is always hit by the best batsmen 
when just opposite to them. Cutting forms no excep- 
tion : the best cutters turn the body round on the basis 
of the feet till the breast fronts the ball, — having let 
the ball go almost as far as the bails, — and then the full 
power of the hitter is brought to bear with the least 
possible diminution of the original speed of the ball. 
This is the meaning of the observation, — that fine 
cutters appear to follow the ball, and at the latest 
moment cut the ball off the bails ; for, if you do not 
follow the ball, by turning your breast to it at the 
moment you hit, you can have no power for a fine cut. 
It makes good "chamber practice " to suspend a ball 
oscillating by a string : you will soon see wherein lies 
the peculiar power of cutting, which characterizes Mr. 
Bradshaw, Mr. Felix, and Mr. C. Taylor ; as of old, 
Searle, Saunders, and Robinson. Robinson cut so late 
that the ball often appeared past the wicket. 



116 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

And these hints will suffice to awaken attention to 
the powers of the bat. Clean hitting is a thing to be 
carefully studied ; the player who has never discovered 
his deficiency in it, had need examine and see whether 
there is not a secret he has yet to learn. 

The Tice. Safest to block: apt to be missed, be- 
ca\ise a dropping ball ; hard to get away, because on 
the ground. Drop the bat smartly on the ground, and 
it will make a run, but do not try too much of a hit. 
The Tice is almost a full pitch ; the way to hit it, says 
Caldecourt, is to go in and make it a full pitch : I can- 
not advise this for beginners. Going in even to a Tice 
puts you out of form for the next ball, and creates a 
dangerous habit. 

Ground balls, and all balls that touch the ground 
more than once between wickets, I have already hinted, 
are reckoned very easy, but they are always liable to 
come in very dangerous. Sometimes you have three 
hops, and the last like a good length ball : they are 
liable to twist both on and off with the inequalities of 
the ground ; also, if bowled with the least bias, there 
is much scope for that bias to produce effect. All 
these peculiarities account for the often puzzling fact 
that the best batsmen are out with the worst bowling. 
Bad bowling requires a game of its own, and a game 
of the greatest care, where too commonly we find the 
least, because u only underhand bowling, not by any 
means good lengths ; " it requires especially playing at 



SECRET OF HARD HITTING, 117 

the ball itself, even to the last inch, and not by cal- 
culation of the pitch and rise. 

Let me further remark that hitting, to be either free, 
quick, or clean, must be done by the arms and wrists, 
and not by the body, yet the weight of the body must 
be thrown in at the proper moment by putting down 
the left leg. Take it as a rule in hitting, that that 
which is not elegant is not right ; for the human frame 
is rarely inelegant in its movements when all the 
muscles act in their natural direction. Many men play 
with their shoulders up to their ears, and their sinews 
all in knots, and because they are conscious of desper* 
ate exertion, they forget that their force is going any* 
where than into the ball. It is an old saying, that 
hard hitting does not depend on strength. No. It 
depends not on the strength a man has, but on the 
strength he brings to bear ; and strength is exerted in 
hitting, as in throwing a ball, in exact proportion to 
the rapidity of the whirl or circle which the bat or 
hand describes. The point of the bat moves faster in 
the circle than any other part, and, therefore, did not 
the jar, resulting from the want of resistance, place the 
point of hitting, as experience shows, a little higher up, 
the nearer the end the harder would be the hit. The 
wrist, however slight its force, acting with a multiply* 
ing power, adds greatly to the speed of this whirl. 

Hard hitting, then, depends, first, on the freedom 
with which the arm revolves from the shoulder, unim- 



118 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

peded by constrained efforts and contortions of the 
body ; next on the play of the arm at the elbow ; 
thirdly, on the wrists. Observe any cramped, clumsy 
hitter, and you will recognize these truths at once. 
His elbow is glued to his side, his shoulder stiff at the 
joint, and the little speed of his bat depends on a twist 
and a wriggle of his whole body. 

Keep your body as composed and easy as the re- 
quisite adjustment of the left leg will admit; let your 
arms do the hitting ; and remember the wrists. The 
whiz that meets the ear will be a criterion of increasing 
power. Practise hard hitting, — that is, the full and 
timely application of your strength, not only for the 
value of the extra score, but because hard hitting and 
correct and clean hitting are one and the same thing. 
Mere stopping balls and poking about in the blockhole 
is not cricket, however successful ; and I must admit, 
that one of the most awkward, poking, vexatious block- 
ers that ever produced a counterfeit of cricket, defied 
Bayley and Cobbett at Oxford in 1836, — three hours, 
and made five and thirty runs. Another friend, a bet- 
ter player, addicted to the same teasing game, in a 
match at Exeter in 1845, blocked away till his party, 
the N. Devon, won the match, chiefly of byes and wide 
balls ! Such men might have turned their powers to 
much better account. 

Some maintain that anything that succeeds is cricket ; 
but not such cricket as full-grown men should vote a 



HOW TO USE YOUR EYES. 119 

scientific and a manly exercise ; otherwise, to " run cun- 
ning'' might be Coursing, and to kill sitting Shooting. 
A player may happen to succeed with what is not 
generally a successful style, — winning in spite of his 
awkwardness, and not by virtue of it. 

But there is another cogent reason for letting your 
arms, and not your body, do the work, — namely, that 
it makes all the difference to your sight whether the 
level of the eye remains the same as with a composed 
and easy hitter, or unsteady and changing, as with the 
wriggling and the clumsy player. Whether a ball 
undulates in the air, or whether there is an equal 
undulation in the line of the eye which regards that 
ball, the confusion and indistinctness is exactly the 
same. Look at any distant object, and wave your head 
up and down for an experiment, and you will under- 
stand the confusion of sight to which I allude. The 
only security of a good batsman, as of a good shot, 
consists in the hand and eye being habituated to act 
together. Now the hand may obey the eye when at 
rest, but have no such habit when in unsteady motion. 
And this shows how uncertain all hitting must be, 
when, either by the movement of the body or other 
cause, the line of sight is suddenly raised or depressed. 

The same law of sight shows the disadvantage of 
men who stand at guard very low, and then suddenly 
raise themselves as the ball is coming. 

The same law of sight explains the disadvantage of 



120 THE CHICKET FIELD. 

stepping in to hit, especially a slow dropping ball : the 
eye is puzzled by a double motion — the change in the 
level of the ball, and the change in the level of the line 
of sight. 

So much for our theory — now for experience. Look 
at Pilch and all fine players ! 

How characteristic is the ease and repose of their 
figures — no hurry or trepidation. How little do their 
heads or bodies move ! Whereas bad players move a 
dozen times while the ball is coming, as if they stood 
on a hot iron, with precisely the disadvantage that 
attends an unsteady telescope. " Then you would 
actually teach a man how to see ? " We would teach 
him how to give his eyes a fair chance. Of sight, as 
of quickness, most players have enough, if they would 
only make good use of it. 

To see a man wink his eyes and turn his head away 
is not uncommon the first day of partridge shooting, 
and quite as common at the wicket. An undoubting 
judgment and knowledge of the principles of batting 
literally improves the sight, for it increases that calm 
confidence which is essential for keeping your eyes 
open and in a line to see clearly. 

Sight of a ball also depends on a habit of undivided 
attention both before and after delivery. 



UPRIGHT PLAY. 121 



A HABIT OF STRAIGHT AND UPRIGHT PLAY. 

To be a good judge of a horse, to have good com- 
mon sense, and to hit straight and upright at Cricket, 
are qualifications never questioned without dire offence. 
Yet few, very few, ever play as upright as they might 
play, and that even to guard their three stumps. To 
be able, with a full and upright bat, to play well over 
and command a ball a few inches to the Off, or a little 
to the leg, is a very superior and rare order of ability. 

The first exercise for learning upright play is to 
practise several times against an easy bowler, with 
both hands on the same side of the handle of the bat. 
Not that this is the way to hold a bat in play, though 
the bat so held must be upright ; but this exercise of 
rather poking than playing will insure you to the habit 
and method of upright play. Afterwards, shift your 
hands to their proper position, and practise slipping 
«your left hand round into the same position, while in 
the act of coming forward. 

But be sure you stand up to your work, or close to 
your block-hole ; and let the bowler admonish you 
every time you shrink aw T ay or appear afraid of the 
ball. Much practice is required before it is possible 
for a young player to attain that perfect composure and 
indifference to the ball that characterizes the professor. 
11 



122 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

The least nervousness or shrinking is sure to draw the 
bat out of the perpendicular. As to shrinking from the 
ball — I do not mean any apprehension of injury, but 
only the result of a want of knowledge of length or 
distance, and the result of uncertainty as to how the 
ball is coming, and how to prepare to meet it. Nothing 
distinguishes the professor from the amateur, more than 
the composed and unshrinking posture in which he 
plays a ball. 

Practice alone will prevent shrinking : encouraging 
your bowler continually reminds you of it. As to 
practising with a bowler, you see some men at Lord's 
and the University grounds batting hour after hour, as 
if cricket were to be taken by storm. Ta practise long 
at one time is positively injurious. For about one 
hour a man may practise to advantage ; for a second 
hour he may rather improve his batting even by keep- 
ing wicket, or being long stop. Anything is good 
practice for batting that habituates the hand and eye to 
act together. 

The next exercise is of a more elegant kind, and 
quite coincident with your proper game. Always 
throw back the point of the bat, while receiving the 
ball, to the top of the middle stump, as in figure, page 
107 ; then the handle will point to the bowler, and the 
whole bat be in the line of the wicket. By com- 
mencing in this position, you cannot fail to bring your 
bat straight and full upon the ball. If you take up 



A CONVENIENT EXERCISE. 123 

your bat straight, you cannot help hitting straight ; 
but, if once you raise the point of the bat across the 
wicket, to present a full bat for that ball is quite im- 
possible. 

One advantage of this exercise is that it may be 
practised even without a bowler. The path of a field, 
with ball and bat, and a stick for a stump, are all the 
appliances required. Place the ball before you, one, 
two, or more feet in advance, and more or less On or 
Off, at discretion. Practise hitting with right foot al- 
ways fixed, and with as upright and full a bat as 
possible : keep your .left elbow up, and always over the 
ball. 

This exercise will teach, at the same time, the full 
powers of the bat ; what style of hitting is most effica- 
cious ; at what angle you smother the ball, and at 
what you can hit clean ; only, be careful to play in 
form ; and always see that your right foot has not 
moved before you follow to pick up the ball. Fixing 
the right foot is alone a great help to upright play ; 
for, while the right foot remains behind, the right 
shoulder cannot come forward ; and this it must do to 
hit across wicket. Firmness in the right foot is also 
essential to hard hitting, for you cannot exert much 
strength unless you stand in a firm and commanding 
position. 

Upright and straight hitting, then, requires, briefly, 
the point of the bat thrown back to the middle stump 



124 THE CRICKET EIELD. 

as the ball is coming ; secondly, the left elbow well 
up ; and, thirdly, the right foot fixed, and near the 
blockhole. 

Never play a single ball without strict attention to 
these three rules. At first, you will feel cramped and 
powerless ; but practice will soon give ease and ele- 
gance ; and you will have mastered the principle, not 
only of all sure defence, but of all certain hitting ; for 
the straight player has always wood enough and to 
spare in the way of the ball ; whereas, the deviation of 
half an inch leaves the cross-player at fault. Mr. "Wil- 
liam Ward once played a single wicket match with a 
thick stick, against another with a bat ; yet these are not 
much more than the odds of good straight play against 
cross play. At Cheltenham College, the first Eleven 
plays the second Eleven "a broomstick match.'' From 
the 400 pupils and masters an Eleven is chosen su- 
perior to any in the county of Gloucester ; and I ven- 
ture to predict that Mr. M. K. will be among the first 
players in Cambridge, and raise Cheltenham high among 
the schools of cricketers. 

When a player hits almost every time he raises his 
bat, the remark is, What an excellent eye that batsman 
has ! But upright play tends far more than eye to cer- 
tainty in hitting. It is not easy to miss when you 
make the most of every inch of your bat. But when 
you trust to the width alone, a slight error produces a 
miss, and not uncommonly a catch. 



PLAYING FORWARD AND BACK. 125 

The great difficulty in learning upright play consists 
in detecting when you are playing across. So your 
practice-bowler must remind you of the slightest shift- 
ing of the foot, shrinking from the wicket, or declina- 
tion of your bat. Straight bowling is more easy to i 
stand up to without nervous shrinking, and slow bowl- 
ing best reveals every weak point, because a slow ball 
must be played : it will not play itself. Many a 
stylish player is beat by slow bowling, because never 
thoroughly grounded in the principles of correct play 
and judgment of lengths. 

Underhand bowling is the best of any for a learner, 
and learners are, or should be, a large class. Being 
generally at the wicket, it produces the straigntest 
play: falling stumps are "no flatterers, but feelingly 
remind us what we are." Caldecourt, who had a plain, 
though judicious, style of bowling, once observed a 
weak point in Mr. Ward's *play, and levelled his 
stumps three times in about as many balls. Many 
men, boasting, as Mr. Ward then did, of nearly the 
first average of his day, would have blamed the bowler, 
the ground, the wind, and, in short, any thing but 
themselves ; but Mr. Ward, a liberal patron of the 
game, in the days of his prosperity, gave Caldecourt 
a guinea for his judgment in the game and his useful 
lesson. "Such," Dr. Johnson would say, "is the 
spirit and self-denial of those whose memories are not 
11* 



126 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

doomed to decay" with their bats, but play cricket for 
" immortality.' ' 



PLAYING FORWARD AND BACK. 

We have now to speak of playing length-balls, and 
when to play forward at the pitch of the ball, and 
when back for better sight of the rebound. 

A length-ball is one that pitches at a puzzling length 
from the bat. This is a length that cannot be reduced 
to measurement, depending on the delivery of the 
bowler and the reach of the batsman. 

Any ball is a length-ball which pitches almost, but 
not quite, within the command of a batsman, according 
to his reach and ability. For more intelligible ex- 
planation, I must refer you to your friends. 

Every player is conscious of one particular length 
that puzzles him, — of one point between himself and 
the bowler, in which he would rather that the ball 
should not pitch. " There is a length-ball that 
almost blinds you," said an experienced player at 
Lord's. There is a length that makes many a 
player shut his eyes and turn away his head. " A 
length," says Mr. Felix, " that brings over a man 
most indescribable emotions." There arc two ways 
to play such balls ; to discriminate is difficult, and, " if 



PLAYING FORWARD AND BACK. 127 

you doubt, you are lost." Let a be the furthest point 




to which a good player can reach, so as to plant his bat 
at the proper angle, at once preventing a catch, stop- 
ping a shooter, and intercepting* a bailer. Then, at 
any point short of A, should the bat be placed, the ball 
may rise over the bat if held to the ground, or shoot 
under if the bat is a little raised. At b the same single 
act of planting the bat cannot both cover a bailer and 
stop a shooter. Every ball which the batsman can 
reach, as at a, may be met with a full bat forward ; 
and, being taken at the pitch, it is either stopped or 
driven away with all its rising, cutting, shooting, or 
twisting propensities undeveloped. But any ball you 
cannot cover, as at b, must be played back nearly in 
the attitudes shown in pages 107, and 14.1. This back 
play gives as long a sight of the ball as possible, and 
enables the player either to be up for a bailer or down 
for a shooter. 

More Hard Nuts. — Why do certain lengths puzzle, 
and what is the nature of all this puzzling emotion ? It 
is a sense of confusion and of doubt. At the moment of 



128 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

the pitch, the ball is lost in the ground ; so you doubt 
whether it will rise, or whether it will shoot — whether 
it will twist, or come in straight. The eye follows the 
ball till it touches the ground : till this moment there 
is no great doubt, for its course is known to be uniform. 
I say no great doubt, because there is always some 
doubt till the ball has passed some yards from the 
bowler's hand. The eye cannot distinguish the direc- 
tion of a ball approaching, till it has seen a fair portion 
or a good sample of the flight of it. Then only can 
you calculate what the rest of the flight will be. Still, 
before the ball has pitched, the first doubt is resolved, 
and the batsman knows the ball's direction ; but, when 
once it touches the ground, the change of light alone 
(earth instead of air being the back ground) is trying 
to the eye. Then at the rise recommences all the un- 
certainty of a second delivery ; for the direction of the 
ball has once more to be ascertained, and that requires 
almost as much time for sight as will sometimes bring 
the ball into the wicket. 

All this difficulty of sight applies only to the bats- 
man ; to him the ball is advancing and foreshortened 
in proportion as it is straight. If the ball is rather 
wide, or if seen, as by Point, from the side, the ball 
may be easily traced, without confusion, from first to 
last. It is the fact of an object approaching perfectly 
straight to you, that confuses your sense of distance. 
Thus, a man standing on a railway cannot judge of the 



FORWARD PLAY. 129 

nearness of the engine ; nor a man behind a target of 
the approach of the arrow. Though seen obliquely, 
the flight is clear. A long hop is not a puzzling length, 
because there is time to ascertain the second part of 
the course or rebound : a toss is easy, because one 
course only. The tice also, and the half-volley, or any 
over-pitched ball, are not so puzzling, because they 
may be met forward, and thus the two parts of the 
flight reduced to one. Such is the philosophy of 
forward play, intended to obviate the batsman's chief 
difficulty, which is with the second part or the rebound 
of the ball. 

The following are good rules :— 

1 . Meet every ball at the pitch by forward play which 
you can conveniently cover. 

Whatever ball you can play forward, you can play 
safely — as by one single movement. But in playing 
the same ball back, you give yourself two things to 
think of instead of one — stopping and keeping down a 
bailer, and stopping a shooter. Every ball is the more 
difficult to play back in exact proportion to the ease 
with which it might be played forward. The player 
has a shorter sight, and less time to see the nature of 
the rise ; so the ball crowds upon him, affording neither 
time nor space for effective play. Never play back but 
of necessity ; meet every ball forward which you can 
conveniently cover — I say conveniently, because, if the 
pitch of the ball cannot be reached without danger of 



130 1HE CRICKET FIELD. 

losing your balance, misplacing your bat, or drawing 
your foot out of your ground, that ball should be con- 
sidered out of reach, and be played back. This rule 
many fine players, in their eagerness to score, are apt to 
violate ; so, if the ball rises abruptly, they are bowled 
or caught. There is also danger of playing wide of the 
ball, if you over-reach. 

2. Some say, when in doubt, play back. Certainly 
all balls may be played back ; but many it is almost 
impracticable to play forward. But since the best for- 
ward players may err, the following hint, founded on 
the practice of Fuller Pilch, will suggest an excellent 
means of getting out of a difficulty : — Practise the art 
of half-play ; that is, practise going forward to balls a 
little beyond your reach, and then, instead of planting 
your bat near the pitch, which is supposed too far 
distant to be effectually covered, watch for the ball 
about half-way, being up if it rises, and down if it 
shoots. By this half-play, which I learnt from one of 
Pilch's pupils, I have often saved my wicket when I 
found myself forward for a ball out of reach ; though 
before, I felt defenceless, and often let the ball pass 
either under or over my bat. Still half-play, though a 
fine saving clause for proficients, is but a choice of 
evils, and no practice for learners, as forming a bad 
habit. By trying too many ways, you spoil your 
game. 

3. Ascertain the extent of your utmost reach for- 



FORWARD PLAY. 131 

ward, and practise accordingly. The simplest method 
is to fix your right foot at the crease, and try how far 
forward you can conveniently plant your bat at the 
proper angle ; then, allowing that^ the ball may be 
covered at about three feet from its pitch, you will see 
at once how many feet you can command in front of 
the crease. Pilch could command from ten to twelve 
feet. Some short men will command ten feet ; that is 
to say, they will safely meet forward every ball pitching 
within that distance from the crease. 

There are two ways of holding a bat in playing 
forward. The position of the hands, as of Pilch, in 
the frontispiece, standing at guard, will not admit of 
a long reach forward. But by shifting the left hand 
behind the bat, the action is free, and the reach 
unimpeded. 

Every learner must practise this shifting of the left 
hand in forward play. The hand will soon come round 
naturally. Also learn to reach forward with composure 
and no loss of balance. Play forward evenly and grace- 
fully, with rather an elastic movement. Practice will 
greatly increase your reach. Take care you do not lose 
sight of the ball, as many do, and look at the ball itself, 
not merely at the spot where you expect it to pitch. 
Much depends on commencing at the proper moment, 
and not being in a hurry. More useful hints on forward 
play are found in our last pages. 



132 THE CRICKET FIELD. 




Forward play may be practised almost as well in a 
room as in a cricket-field : better still with a ball in trie 
path of a field. To force a ball back to the bowler or 
long-field by hard forward play is commonly called 
Driving ; and driving you may practise without any 
bowler, and greatly improve in balance and correctness 
of form, and thus increase the extent of your reach, and 
habituate the eye to a correct discernment of the point 
at which forward play ends and back play begins. By 
practice you will attain a power of coming forward 
with a spring, and playing hard or driving. All fine 
players drive nearly every ball they meet forward, and 
this driving admits of so many degrees of strength that 
sometimes it amounts to quite a hard hit. u I once/' 
said Clarke, " had thought there might be a school 
opened for cricket in the winter months, for you may 
drill a man to use a bat as well as a broadsword." 
With driving, as with half-play, be not too eager — play 
forward surely and steadily at first, otherwise the point 



CAUTION IN FORWARD PLAY. 133 

of the bat will get in advance, or the hit be badly 
timed, and give a catch to the bowler. This is one 
error into which the finest forward players have some- 
times gradually fallen — a vicious habit, formed from an 
overweening confidence and success upon their own 
ground. Comparing notes lately with an experienced 
player, we both remembered a time in which we thought 
we could make hard and free hits even off those balls 
which good players play gently back to the bowler ; but 
eventually a succession of short innings sent us back to 
safe and sober play. 

Sundry other hits are made, contrary to every rule, 
by players accustomed to one ground, or one set of 
bowlers. Many an Etonian has found that a game, 
which succeeded in the shooting fields, has proved an 
utter failure when all was new at Lord's, or in a coun- 
try match. 

Every player should practise occasionally with pro- 
fessional bowlers, for they look to the principle of play, 
and point out radical errors even in showy hits. 

One great difficulty, we observed, consists in correct 
discrimination of length and instantaneous decision. 
To form correctly as the ball pitches, there is time 
enough, but none to spare : time only to act, no time 
to think. So also with shooting, driving, and various 
kinds of exercises, at the. critical moment all depend 
not on thought, but habit ; by constant practice, the 
time requisite for deliberation becomes less and less, 
12 



134 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

till at length we are unconscious of any deliberation at 
all, — acting, as it were, by intuition or instinct, for the 
occasion prompts the action : then, in common lan- 
guage, we "do it naturally," or "have formed the 
habit of doing so." 

In this sense a player must form a habit of correct 
decision in playing forward and back. Till he plays 
by habit he is not safe : the sight of the length must 
prompt the corresponding movement. Look at Fuller 
Pilch, or Mr. C. Taylor, and this rule will be readily 
understood ; for, with such players, every ball is as 
naturally and instinctively received by its appropriate 
movement as if the player were automaton, and the 
ball touched a spring : so quickly does forward play, or 
back, and the attitude for off cut or leg hit, appear to 
coincide with, or rather to anticipate, each suitable 
length. All this quickness, ease, and readiness marks a 
habit of correct play ; and the question is how to form 
such a habit. 

All the calmness and composure we admire in profi- 
cients results from a habit of playing each length in 
one way, and in one way only. To attain this habit, 
measure your reach before the crease as you begin to 
practise with a bowler, and make a mark visible to the 
bowler, but not such as will divert your own eye. 

Having fixed such a mark,- let your bowler pitch, as 
nearly as he can, sometimes on this side of the mark, 
sometimes on that. After every ball, you have only to 



PRACTISE WITH A MABK. 135 

ask which side ? and you will have demonstrative 
proof whether your play has been right or wrong. 
Constant practice, with attention to the pitch, will hab- 
ituate your eye to lengths, and enable you to decide in 
a moment how to play. 

For my own part, I have rarely practised for years 
without this mark. It enables me to ascertain, by 
referring to the bowler, where any ball has pitched. 
To know at a glance the exact length of a ball, how- 
ever necessary, is not quite as easy to the batsman as 
to the bowler ; and, without practising with a mark, 
you may remain a long time in error. 

After a few days' practice, you will become as certain 
of the length of each ball, and of your ability to reach 
it, as if you actually saw the mark, for you will carry 
the measurement in " your mind's eye." 

So far well : you have gained a perception of lengths 
and distance ; the next thing is to apply this know- 
ledge. Therefore bear in mind you have a habit to 
form. No doubt many will laugh at this philosophy. 
Pilch does not' know the " theory of moral habits," I 
dare say ; but he knows well enough that wild prac- 
tice spoils play ; and if to educated men I please to 
say that wild play involves the formation of a set of 
bad habits to hang about you, and continually interfere 
with good intentions, where is the absurdity ? How 
should you like to be doomed to play with some mis- 
chievous fellow, always tickling your elbow, and mak- 



136 THE CHICKET FIELD. 

ing you spasmodically play forward, when you ought 
to play back, or hit round, or cut when you ought to 
play straight ? Precisely such a mischievous sprite is 
a bad habit. Till you have got rid of him, he is al- 
ways liable to come across you, and tickle you out of 
your innings : all your resolution is no good. Habit 
is a much stronger principle than resolution. Accustom 
the hand to obey sound judgment, otherwise it will 
follow its old habit instead of your new principles. 

To borrow an admirable illustration from Plato, 
which Socrates' pupil remarked was rather apt than 
elegant, — " While habit keeps up itching, man can't 
help scratching." And what is most remarkable in 
bad habits of play is, that long after a man thinks he 
has overcome them, by some chance association the 
old trick appears again, and a man feels (oh ! fine for a 
moralist!) one law in his mind, and another law — or 
rather, let us say, he feels a certain latent spring in 
him ever liable to be touched, and disturb all the har- 
mony of his cricketing economy. 

Having, therefore, a habit to form, take the greatest 
pains that you methodically play forward to the over- 
pitched and back to the underpitched balls. My cus- 
tom was, the moment the ball pitched, to say audibly 
to myself, " forward," or "back." By degrees I was 
able to calculate the length sooner and sooner before 
the pitch, having, of course, the more time to prepare, 
till at last no sooner was the ball out of the bowler's 



A HABIT TO FORM. 137 

hand, than ball and bat were visibly preparing for each 
other's reception. After some weeks' practice, forward 
and back play became so easy that I ceased to think 
about it, the very sight of the ball naturally suggesting 
the appropriate movement ; in other words, I had 
formed a habit of correct play in this particular. 

"Dulci rrtari magna," says Lucretius ; that is, it is 
delightful, from the vantage ground of science, to see 
others floundering in a sea of error, and to feel a happy 
sense of comparative security ; — so was it no little 
pleasure to see the many wickets that fall, or the many 
catches that were made, from defects I had entirely 
overcome. 

For, without the habit aforesaid, a man will often 
shut his eyes, remove his right fingers, as if the bat 
were too hot, and then look behind him and find his 
wicket down. A second will advance a foot forward, 
feel and look all abroad, and then try to seem uncon- 
cerned, if no mischief happens. A third will play back 
with the shortest possible sight of the ball, and hear 
his stumps rattle before he has time to do anything. A 
fourth will stand still, a fixture of fuss and confusion, 
with the same result; while a fifth will go gracefully 
forward, with straightest possible bat, and the most 
meritorious elongation of limb, and the ball will pass 
over the shoulder of his bat, traverse the whole length 
of his arms, and back, and colossal legs, tipping off the 
bails, or giving a chance to the wicket-keeper. Then, 
12* 



138 THE CEICKM FIELD. 

as Poins says of Falstaff, "The virtue of this jest will 
be the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue 
will tell us." For when a man is out by this simple 
error in forward or backward play, it would take a 
volume to record the variety of his excuses. 

The reason so much has been said about habit is, 
partly, that the player may understand that bad habits 
are formed as readily as good ; that a repetition of wild 
hits, or experimentalizing with hard hits off good 
lengths, may disturb your quick perception of critical 
lengths, and give you an uncontrollable habit of dan- 
gerous hitting. 

The Shooter.— This is the surest and most destruc- 
tive ball that is bowled ; stopping shooters depends oil 
correct position and knowledge of the game. 

The great thing is decision ; to doubt is to lose time, 
and to lose time is to lose your wicket. And this 
decision requires a correct habit of forward and back 
play. But, since prevention is better than cure, by 
meeting at the pitch every ball within your reach, you 
directly diminish the number, not only of shooters, but 
of the most dangerous of all shooters, because those 
which afford the shortest time to play. But supposing 
you cannot cover the ball at the pitch, and a shooter it 
must be, then — 

The first thing is to have the bat always pointed 
back to the bails, as in fig. 1, page 107 ; thus you will 
drop down on the ball, and have all the time and space 



SHOOTING BALLS. 139 

the case admits of. If the bat is not thus thrown back, 
when the ball shoots the player has two operations, — 
the one to put the bat back, and the other to ground 
it, instead of one simple drop down alone. I never 
saw any man do this better than Wenman, when play- 
ing the North and South match at Lord's, in 1836. 
Redgate was in his prime, and almost all his balls were 
shooting down the hill ; and, from the good time and 
precision with which Wenman dropped down upon 
some dozen shooters, with all the pace and spin for 
which Redgate was famous — the ground being hard- 
ened into brick by the sun — -I have ever considered 
Wenman equal to any batsman of his day. 

The second thing is, to prepare for back play with 
the first possible intimation that the ball will require 
it. A good player descries the enemy, and drops back 
as soon as the ball is out of the bowler's hand. 

The third — a golden rule for batsmen — is: expect 
a good length to shoot, and you will have time, if it 
rises ; but if you expect it to rise, you are too late if it 
shoots. 

The Bail Ball. — First, the attitude is that of fig. 
1 . The bat thrown back to the bails is indispensable 
for quickness : if you play a bailer too late, short slip 
is placed on purpose to catch you out ; therefore watch 
the ball from the bowler's hand, and drop back on your 
wicket in good time. Also, take the greatest pains in 
tracing the ball everv inch from the hand to the bat. 



140 THE CBICKET FIELD. 

Look hard for the twist, or a "break" will be fatal. 
To keep .the eye steadily on the ball, and not lose it 
at the pitch, is a hint even for experienced players : so 
make this a subject for attentive practice. 

The most difficult of all bailers are those which 
ought not to be allowed to come in as bailers at all, 
but be met at the pitch. Such overpitched balls give 
neither time nor space for safe play. 

Every length ball is difficult to play back just in 
proportion to the ease with which it could be covered 
forward. A certain space, from nine to twelve feet, 
before the crease is, to a practised batsman, so much 
terra firma, whereon pitching every ball is a safe stop 
or score. - Practise with the chalk mark, and learn to 
make this terra firma as wide as possible. 

The Draw is so called, I suppose, because, when 
perfectly made, there is no draw in it. Look at Jig. 2. 
The bat is not drawn across the wicket, but hangs per- 
pendicularly from the wrists ; though the wrists of a 
good player are never idle, but bring the bat to meet 
the ball a few inches, and the hit is the natural angle 
formed by the opposing forces. " Say also," suggests 
Clarke, with his usual shrewd discernment, " that the 
ball meeting the bat, held easy in the hand, will turn 
it a little of its own force, and the wrists feel when to 
help it." 

The Draw is the spontaneous result of straight play 



THE DRAW. 



141 




about the two leg stumps : for if you begin, as in fig. 1., 
with point of bat thrown back true to middle stump, 
you cannot bring the bat straight to meet a leg stump 
ball without the line of the bat and the line of the ball 
forming an angle in crossing each other ; and, by 
keeping your wrists well back, and giving a clear space 
between body and wicket, the Draw will follow of 
itself. 



142 THE CRICKET FIELD. * 

The bat must not be purposely presented edgeways 
in the least degree. Draw a full bat from the line of 
the middle stump to meet a leg-stump ball, and you 
will have the benefit of a hit without lessening your 
defence. " A Draw is very dangerous with a ball that 
would hit the leg-stump," some say ; but only when 
attempted in the wrong way ; for how can a full bat 
increase your danger ? 

This mode of play will also lead to, what is most 
valuable, but most rare, a correct habit of passing 
every ball the least on side of middle stump clear 
away to the on side. This blocking between legs and 
wickets first obviates the ball going off legs into 
wicket ; secondly, it keeps- many awkward balls out of 
Slip's hands ; and, thirdly, it makes single runs off the 
best balls. 

Too little, now-a days, is done with the Draw ; too 
much is attempted by the " blind swipe," to the loss of 
many wickets. 

Every man, in a first-rate match, who loses his 
wicket, while swiping round, ought to pay a forfeit to 
the Reward Fund. 

The only balls for the Draw are those which threaten 
the wicket. To shuffle backwards half a yard, scrap- 
ing the bat on the ground, or to let the ball pass one 
side the body, with a blind swing on the other, are 
hits which to mention is to reprove. 

Our good friend, Mr. Abraham Bass, — and what 



OFF PLAY. 143 

t 

cricketer in the Midland Counties defers not to his 
judgment, — thinks that the Draw cannot be made quite 
so much of as we say, except by a left-handed man. 
The short-pitched balls, which some draw, he thinks, 
are best played back to middle On by a turn of the 
left arm to the On side. 

Here Mr. Bass mentions a very good hit— a good 
variety — and one, too, little practised : his hit and the 
Draw are each good in their respective places. To dis- 
criminate every shade is impossible. " Mr. Taylor 
had most hits I ever saw," said Caldecourt, " and was 
a better player, even, than Lord Frederick ; though 
Mr. Taylor's hits were not all legitimate : " so much 
the better ; new combinations of old hits. 

The old-fashioned hit under left leg, Mr. Mynn, at 
Leicester, in 1836, gave great effect to one variety of it ; 
a hit which Pilch makes useful, though hard to make 
elegantly. Some say, with Caldecourt, such balls 
ought always to be drawn ; but is it not a useful 
variety ? 

Draw or Glance from off Stump. — What is 
true of the Leg stump is true of the Off, care being 
taken of catch to slips. Every ball played from two off 
stumps by free play of wrist and left shoulder well 
over should go away among the Slips. Play hard on 
the ball ; the ball must never hit a dead bat ; and 
every so-called block, from off stumps, must be a hit. 

Commence, as always, from Jig. 1 ; stand close up to 



144 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

your wicket ; weight on pivot-foot ; balance-foot ready 
to come over as required. This is the only position 
from which yon can command the off-stump. 

Bear with me, my friends, in dwelling so much on 
this Off-play. Many fine cutters could never in their 
lives command off-stump with a full and upright bat. 
Whence come the many misses of off-hits ? Observe, 
and you will see it is because the bat is slanting, or it 
must sweep the whole space through which the ball 
could rise. 

By standing close up, and playing well over your 
wicket with straight bat, and throwing, by means of 
left leg, the body forwards, over a ball rising to the off- 
stump, you may make an effective hit from an off-bailer 
without lessening your defence ; for how can hard 
blocking, with a full bat, be dangerous ? All that is 
required, is, straight play and a free wrist, though cer- 
tainly a tall man has here a great advantage. 

A free Wrist. — Without wrist-play, there can be 
no good style of batting. Do not be puzzled about 
" throwing your body into your hit." Absurd, except 
with straight hits — a volley, for instance. Suspend a 
ball, oscillating by a string from a beam, keep your 
right foot fixed, and use the left leg to give the time 
and command of the ball, and adjust the balance, and 
you will soon learn the power of the wrists and arms. 
Also, use no heavy bats ; 2 lbs. 2 oz. is heavy enough 
for any man who plays with his wrists. The wrist 



OFF HIT. 145 

has, anatomically, two movements ; the one up and 
down, the other from side to side ; and to the latter 
power, by much the least, the weight of the bat must 
be proportioned. " My old-fashioned bat," said Mr. 
E. H. Budd, " weighed nearly three pounds, and Mr. 
Ward's a pound more." 

The Off-hit, here intended, is made with upright 
bat, where the horizontal cut were dangerous or uncer- 
tain. It may be made with any off-ball, one or two 
feet wide of the wicket. The left shoulder must be 
well over the ball, and this can only be effected by 
crossing, as in fig. 3, p. 147, left leg over. This, one 
of the best players agrees, is a correct hit, provided 
the ball be pitched well up ; otherwise he would apply 
the Cut. But the cat serves only when a ball rises ; 
and I am unwilling to spare one that comes in near 
the ground. 

This upright off-hit, with left leg crossed over, may 
be practised with a bat and ball in the path of a field. 
You may also devise some " Chamber Practice," with- 
out any ball, or a soft ball suspended : not a bad in- 
door exercise in cold weather. When proficient, you 
will find that you have only to hit at the ball, and the 
balance-foot will naturally cross over and adjust itself. 

In practising with a bowler I have often fixed a 

fourth stump, about six inches from off-stump, and 

learnt to guard it with upright bat. Crede experto, 

you may learn to sweep with almost an upright bat 

13 



146 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

balls as much as two feet to the off. But this is a hit 
for balls requiring back play, but 

Cover-hit is the hit for over-pitched off-balls. 
Come forward hard to meet an off-ball, and then as 
your bat moves in one line, and the ball meets it in 
another, the resultant will be Cover-hit. By no means 
turn the bat : a full face is not only safe, but effective. 

With all off-hits beware of the bias of the ball to 
the off, and play well over the ball — very difficult for 
young players. Never think about what off-hits you 
can make, unless you keep the ball safely down. 

The fine square leg-hit is similar to cover-hit, though 
on the other side. To make cover-hit clean, and not 
waste power against the ground, you must take full 
advantage of your height, and play the bat well down 
on the ball from your hip, timing nicely, eye still on 
the ball, and inclining the bat neither too little nor too 
much. 

The Forward Cut, a name by which I would dis- 
tinguish another off-hit, is a hit made by Butler, Guy, 
Dakin, Parr, and especially by the Nottingham men, 
who, Clarke thinks, " hit all round them " better 
than men of any other county (see jig. 3). Though 
the figures being foreshortened as seen by the bowler, 
the artist_ unwillingly sacrifices effect to show the cor- 
rect position of the feet. This hit may be made from 
balls too wide and too low for the backward cut. 
Cross the left leg over, watch the ball from its pitch, 



FORWARD CUT. 

Fig. 3, 



14? 




and you may make off hits from balls low or cut balls 
high (unless very high, and then you have time to 
drop the bat) with more commanding power than in 
any other position. Caldecourt does not like this cross- 
ing of left foot ; but I know, from experience and 
observation, that there is not a finer or more useful hit 
in the field ; though let me here attest that Caldecourt 
is admitted to be one of the best of instructors ; and, 
" in my day," said Mr. E. H. Budd, " one of the best 
fieldsmen in England." 

The forward cut is peculiar in this, that, if a ball is 



148 THE CRICKET FIELD, 

some two feet to the off, it matters not whether over* 
pitched or short-pitched, the same position, rather for- 
ward, equally applies. 

This hit sends the ball between point and middle 
wicket a good part of the field, and even to long-field 
sometimes : no little advantage. Also, it admits of 
much greater quickness. 

Fix a fourth stump in the ground, one foot or more 
wide to the off; practise carefully, keeping right foot 
fixed, and crossing left over, and preserve the cutting 
attitude ; and this most brilliant hit is easily acquired. 

When you play a ball off, do not lose your balance 
and stumble awkwardly one foot over the other, but 
end in good form, well on your feet. Even good play- 
ers commit this fault ; also in playing back they look 
as if they would tumble over their wicket. 

The Cut is generally considered the most delightful 
hit in the game. The cut proper is made by very few. 
Many make off-hits, but few " cut from the bails 
between short slip and point with a late horizontal bat, 
cutting, never by guess but always by sight, at the ball 
itself; the cut applying to rather short-pitched balls, 
not actually long hops ; and that not being properly 
a cut which is in advance of the point." Such is the 
definition of Mr. Bradshaw, whom ten years' retire- 
ment has not prevented from being known as one of the 
best hitters of the day. 

The attitude of cutting is faintly given (because fore- 



THE CUT. — NO. 1. 

Fig. 4. 



149 




shortened) in fig. 4. <£his represents a cut at rather a 
wide ball ; and a comparison of Jigs. 3 and 4, will 
show that, with rather wide off balls, the forward cut 
is the better position ; for you more easily intercept 
balls before they are out of play. Right leg would be 
rather thrown back than advanced were the ball nearer 
the wicket. Still the attitude is exceptional. Look at 
the other figures, and the cut alone will appear with 
right foot shifted. Compare fig. 1, with the other 
figures, and the change is easy, as in the left foot alone ; 
13* 



150 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

but compare it with the cuts {figs. 4 and 5,) and the 
whole position is reversed : right shoulder advanced, 
and right foot shifted. There is no ball that can be 
cut which may not be hit by one of the other off hits 
already mentioned, and that with far greater certainty, 
though not with so brilliant an effect. Pilch and many 
of the steadiest and best players never make the genu- 
ine cut. " Mr. Felix," says Clarke, " cuts splendidly ; 
but, in order to do so, he cuts before he sees the ball, 
and thus misses two out of three. " ' Neither do I 
believe that any man will reconcile the habitual straight 
play and command of off-stump that distinguishes Pilch 
with a cutting game. Each virtue, even in cricket, has 
its excess : fine leg hitters are apt to endanger the leg- 
stump ; fine cutters, the off. For the cutter must begin 
to take up his altered position so soon, that the idea 
must be running in his head almost while the ball is 
being delivered ; then the first efforts bring the bat at 
once out of all defensive ancf straight play. Right 
shoulder involuntarily starts forward ; and if at the 
wrong kind of ball, the wicket is exposed, and all 
defence at an end. But with long hops there is time 
dhough to cut : the difficulty is with good balls, and to 
cut them, not by guess but by sight. Fig. 4 repre- 
sents a cut at a ball nearer the wicket, the right foot 
being drawn back to gain space. 

So much for the abuse of cutting. If the ball does 
not rise, there can be no cut, however loose the bowl- 




151 



ing ; though, with the other off-hits, two or three might 
be scored. The most winning game is that which plays 
the greatest number of balls — an art in which no man 
can surpass Mr. Baldwinson. Still a first-rate player 
should have a command of every hit : a bowler may be 
pitching regularly short, and the balls may be regularly 
rising : in this case every one would like to see a good 
cutter at the wicket. 



152 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

To learn the cut, suspend a ball from a string and a 
beam, oscillating backwards and forwards — place your- 
self as at a wicket, and experimentalize. You will 
find:— 

1. You have no power in cutting, unless you cut 
late — " off the bails : " then only can you use the point 
of your bat. 

2. You have no power, unless you turn on the 
basis of your feet, and front the ball, your back being 
almost turned upon the bowler at the moment of cut- 
ting. 

3. Your muscles have little power in cutting quite 
horizontally, but great power in cutting down on the 
ball. 

This agrees with the practice of the best players. 
Mr. Bradshaw follows the ball and cuts very late, cut- 
ting down. He drops his bat apparently on the top of 
the ball. Lord Frederick used to describe the old- 
fashioned cutting as done in the same way. Mr. Brad- 
shaw never cuts but by sight ; and since, when the eye 
catches the rise of a good length ball, not a moment 
must be lost, his bat is thrown back just a little — an 
inch or two higher than the bails (he stoops a little for 
the purpose) — and dropped on the ball in an instant, 
by play of the wrist alone. Thus does he obtain his 
peculiar power of cutting by sight even fair-length 
balls. 

Harry Walker, Robinson, and Saunders were the 



CUTTING. 153 

three great cutters ; and they all cut very late. But the 
under-hand bowling suited cutting (proper) better than 
round-armed; for all off-hitting is not cutting. Mr. 
Felix gives wonderful speed to the ball, effected by 
cutting down, adding the weight of a descending bat 
to the free and full power of the shoulder : he would 
hardly have time for such exertion if he hit with the 
precision of Mr. Bradshaw, and not hitting till he saw 
the ball. 

Lord Frederick found fault with Mr. Felix's picture 
of " the cut," saying it implied' force from the whirl of 
the bat ; whereas a cut should proceed from wrists 
alone, descending with bat in hand, — precisely Mr. 
Bradshaw's hit. " Excuse me, my Lord," said Mr. 
Felix, " that's not a cut, but only a pat." The said 
pat, or wrist play, I believe to be the only kind of cut- 
ting by sight for good-length balls. 

To encourage elegant play, and every variety of hit, 
we say practise each kind of cut, both Lord Frederick's 
pat and Mr. Felix's off-hit, and the Nottingham for- 
ward cut, with left leg over ; but beware of using either 
in the wrong place. A man of one hit is easily 
managed. A good off-hitter should send the ball ac- 
cording to its pitch, not to one point only, but to three 
or four. Old Fennex used to stand by Saunders, and 
say no hitting could be finer — " no hitter such a fool — 
see, sir, they have found out his hit — put a man to stop 
his runs — still cutting, nothing but cutting — why 



154 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

does n't the man hit somewhere else ? " So with Jarvis 
of Nottingham, a fine player and one of the best cut- 
ters of his day. When a man was placed for his cut, 
it greatly diminished his score. For off-balls we have 
given Off-play to the slips — Cover hit — the Notting- 
ham hit more towards middle wicket ; and the Cut 
between slip and point — four varieties. Let each have 
its proper place, till an old player can say, as Fennex 
said of Beldham, " He hit quick as lightning all round 
him. He appeared to have no hit in particular : you 
could never place a man against him : where the ball 
was pitched, there it was hit away." 

Leg-hitting. — Besides the draw, there are two dis- 
tinct kinds of leg-hits — one forward, the other back. 
The forward leg-hit is made, as in jig. 6, by advancing 
the left foot near the pitch of the ball, and then hitting 
down upon the ball with a free arm, the bat being 
more or less horizontal, according to the length of the 
ball. A ball so far pitched as to require little stride of 
left leg will be hit with nearly a straight bat : a ball as 
short as you can stride to will require nearly a hori- 
zontal bat. The ball you can reach with straight bat 
will go off on the principle of the cover-hit — the more 
square the better. But when a ball is only just within 
reach, by using a horizontal bat, you know where to 
find the ball just before it has risen ; for, your bat 
covers the space about the pitch. If you reach far 
enough, even a shooter may be picked up; and if a 



LEG-HITTING. 



155 



Fig. 6. 




few inches short of the pitch, you may have all the 
joyous spring of a half volley. The better pitched the 
bowling, the easier is the hit, if the ball be only a 
little to -the leg. In using a horizontal bat, if you can- 
not reach nearer than about a foot from the pitch, 
sweep your bat through the line in which the ball 
should rise. Look at Jig. 7, p. 160. The bat should 



156 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

coincide with or sweep a fair bat's length of the dotted 
line. But if point of bat cannot reach to within a foot 
of the pitch, that ball must be played back. 

The Short-pitched Leg Ball needs no comment, 
save that, according as it is more or less to the wicket, 
you may, — 1. Draw it; 2. Play it by a new hit, to be 
explained, a Draw or glance outside your leg ; 3. You 
may step back on your wicket to gain space, and play 
it away to middle On, or cut it round, according to 
your sight of it. 

But in leg-hitting, beware of a "blind swipe,", or 
that chance hit by guess of where the ball will rise, 
made when the bat cannot properly be played at the 
pitch. This blind hit is often made at a ball not short 
enough to play by sight back, nor long enough to com- 
mand forward. Parr advances left foot as far as he can, 
and hits where the ball ought to be. But this he 
would hardly advise , except you can nearly command 
the pitch ; otherwise a blind swing of the bat, though 
you sometimes see it even among good players, is not 
to be recommended. 

Reader, do you ever make this square hit On ? Or 
do you ever drive a ball back from the leg-stump to 
long-field On ? Probably not. Clarke complains that 
this good old hit is gone out, and one more "man 
thereby brought about the wicket; and, if you cannot 
make this hit, you have a faulty style of playing leg- 
balls. So, practise diligently with leg-balls, till balls 



STEPPING IN TO HIT. 157 

from two leg-stumps go to long-field On, and balls a 
little wide of leg-stump go nearly square ; and do not 
do this by a kind of push — much too common, — but by 
a real hit, left shoulder forward. 

Also, do you ever draw out of your ground to a leg- 
ball ? Doubly dangerous is this — danger of stumping 
and danger of missing easy hits. If once you move 
your pivot foot, you lose that self-command essential 
for leg-hits. So, practise in your garden or your room 
the stride and swing of the bat, till you have learnt to 
keep your balance. 

One of the best leg-hitters is Dakin, and his rule is : 
keep your right foot firm on your ground ; advance the 
left straight to the pitch, and as far as you can reach, 
and hit as straight at the pitch as you can, just as if 
you were hitting to long-field : the ball will fly round 
square of itself. 

My belief is, the Wykehamists introduced the art of 
hitting leg-balls at the pitch. When, in 1833, at 
Oxford, Messrs. F. B. Wright and Payne scored above 
sixty each off Lillywhite 5 and Broadbridge, it was 
remarked by the players, they had never seen their leg- 
hit before. Clarke says he showed how to make for- 
ward leg-hits at Nottingham. For the Nottingham 
men used to hit after leg-balls, and miss them, till he 
found the way of intercepting them at the rise, and 
hitting square. 

And this will be a fair occasion for qualifying certain 
14 



158 THE CKICKET FIELD. 

remarks which would appear to form what is aptly 
called a " toe-in- the-hole " player. 

When I spoke so strongly about using the right foot 
as a pivot, and the left as a balance foot, insisting, 
also, on not moving the right foot, I addressed myself 
not to proficients, but to learners. Such is the right 
position for almost all the hits on the ball, and this 
fixing of the foot is the only way to keep a learner in 
his proper form. 

Experienced players — I mean those who have passed 
through the University Clubs, and aspired to be chosen 
in the Gentlemen's Eleven of All England — must be 
able to move each foot on its proper occasion, especially 
with slow bowling. Clarke says, " If I see a man fast 
on his legs, I know he can't play my bowling." The 
reason is, as we shall explain presently, that the accu- 
rate hitting necessary for slow bowling requires, not 
long reaching, but a short, quick action of the arms 
and wrists, and activity on the legs, to shift the body 
to suit this hitting in narrow compass. 

A practised player should also be able to go in to 
over-pitched balls to give effect to his forward play. To 
be stumped out looks ill indeed; still, a first-rate 
player should have confidence and coolness enough to 
bide his time, and then go boldly and steadily in and 
hit away. If you do go in, take care you go in far 
enough, and to the pitch, and only go in to straight 
balls, for to those alone can you carry a full bat. And 



HITTING ON THE ON-SIDE. 159 

never go in to make a free swing of the bat or tremen- 
dous swipe. Go in with a straight bat, not so much 
to hit as to drive or block the ball hard away, or, as 
Clarke says, " to run the ball down." Stepping in 
only succeeds with cool and judicious hitters, with 
some power of execution. All young players must be 
warned that for any but a most practised player to 
leave his ground is decidedly a losing game. 

Supposing the batsman knows how to move his right 
foot back readily, the long-hop to the leg admits of 
various modes of play, which I feel bound to mention, 
though not to recommend ; for a first-rate player should 
at least know every hit : whether he will introduce it 
much or little into his game is another question. 

A leg-ball that can be played by sight is sometimes 
played by raising the left leg. This is quite a hit of 
the old school, — of Sparkes and Fennex, for instance. 
Fennex's pupil, Fuller Pilch, makes the hit commonly. 
Some first-rate judges — Caldecourt among others — 
maintain it should never be made, but the Draw always 
used instead. Mr. Taylor found it a useful variety ; 
for, before he used it, Wenman used to stump him 
from balls inside leg stump. For some lengths it has 
certainly the advantage of placing the ball in a more 
open part of the field. 

Another way to play such balls is to step back with 
the right foot, and thus gain time and length of hop, 
and play the ball away with short action of arm and 



160 



THE CRICKET FIELD. 

Fig. 7. 




wrist, about middle On. This also is good, as making- 
one hit more in your game. Another hit there is which 
bears a name not very complimentary to two, in many 
respects, excellent players, Marsden and Dean. Though 
Mr. Sampson, of Sheffield, say his friends, attains in a 



THE DRAW OUTSIDE LEG. 161 

similar manner remarkable certainty in meeting leg- 
balls. My attention was first called to thi§ hit by 
watching the play of Mr. E. Reeves, who makes it with 
all the ease and elegance of the Draw, of which I con- 
sider it one variety. Clarke says t that with a ball 
scarcely wide of your leg, he thinks it a good hit : I 
have, therefore, given a drawing of it in the last page. 
When done correctly, and in its proper place, it is 
made by an easy and elegant movement of the wrists, 
and looks as pretty as the Draw ; but let me enter my 
protest against the absurd and useless distortions too 
commonly enacted by those who, carrying every novelty 
into excess, vainly endeavor to apply this hit to balls 
two or three feet wide. It is properly like the Draw, 
only it is made before the left leg instead of between 
right leg and wicket. It applies to a ball just too wide 
to draw conveniently ; and I should be sorry to be 
held answerable for the abuse of this or any hit. 



14* 



162 THE CRICKET FIELD. 



CHAP. VIII. 
HINTS AGAINST SLOW BOWLING. 

While our ideas on Slow Bowling were yet in a state 
of solution, they were, all at once, precipitated and 
crystallized into natural order by the following remarks 
from a valued correspondent : — 

" I have said that Pilch was unequalled with the bat, 
and his great excellence is in timing the ball. No one 
ever mastered Lillywhite like Pilch ; because in his 
forward play he was not very easily deceived by that 
wary individual's repeated change of pace. He plays 
forward with his eye, not only on the pitch, but at the 
ball itself, being faster or slower in his advance by a 
calm calculation of time — a point too little considered 
by some even of the best batsmen of the day. No 
man hits much harder than Pilch ; and, be it observed, 
hard hitting is doubly hard in all fair comparison when 
combined with that steady posture which does not 
sacrifice the defence of the wicket for some one favorite 
cut or leg-hit. Compare Pilch with good general hit- 
ters who, at the same time, guard their wicket, and I 



SLOW BOWLING. 163 

doubt if you can find from this select class a harder 
hitter in England." 

" But it is of slow bowling I am speaking, and Ful- 
ler is one of the few who play Old Clarke as he should 
be played ; playing him back all day if he bowls short, 
and hitting him hard along the ground whenever he 
overpitches ; and sometimes he will go in to Clarke's 
bowling, but not to make a furious swipe, but to ' run 
him down ' with a straight bat. This going in to 
Clarke's bowling some persons think necessary for every 
ball, forgetting that ' discretion is the better part of 
cricket ; the consequence is that many wickets fall from 
positive long hops. Almost every man who begins to 
play against Clarke appears to think he is in honor 
bound to hit every ball out of the field, and every one 
who attempts it comes out, saying, ' What rubbish ! — 
no play in it ! ' The truth being that there is a great 
deal of play in it, for it requires real knowledge of the 
game. You have curved lines to deal with instead of 
straight ones. « But what difference does that make ? ' 
1 Why, all the difference.' 

" The amusing part is, that this cry of 'What rub- 
bish ! ' has been going on for years, and still the same 
error prevails." 

Experience is not like anything hereditary : as the 
generations of eels do not get used to being skinned, so 
the generations of men do not get tired of doing the 
same foolish thing. Each must suffer propria persona,, 



164 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

and not by proxy. So the gradual development of the 
human mind against Clarke's bowling is for the most 
part this: — first, a state of confidence in hitting every 
ball ; secondly, a state of disgust and contempt at what 
seems only too easy for a scientific player to practise ; 
and, lastly, a slowly increasing conviction that the bats- 
man must have as much head as the bowler, with 
patience to play an unusual number of good lengths. 

Slow bowling is most effective when there is a fast 
bowler at the other end. It is very puzzling to alter 
your time in forward play from fast to slow, and slow 
to fast, every Over : so Clarke and Wisden work well 
together. A shooter from a slow bowler is sometimes 
found even more difficult than one from a fast bowler, 
and this for two reasons ; first, the batsman is made up 
for slow time, and less prepared for fast ; and, secondly, 
a slow ball admits of being pitched further up, and, 
therefore, if the fast shooter has more pace, the slow 
has the shorter distance to shoot into the wicket. 

Compare the several styles of bowling in the follow- 
ing diagram. A good length ball, you see, pitches 
nearer to the bat in proportion to the slowness of its 
pace. Wisden is not so fast, nor is Clarke as slow, 
practically, as they respectively appear. With Wis- 
den' s straight lines it is far easier to calculate where 
the ball will pitch than with the curved lines and drop- 
ping balls of Clarke ; and when Wisden's ball has 
pitched, though its pace is quicker, the distance it has 



SLOW BOWLING COMPARED WITH FAST. 



165 



r 



^^S^Zx 



Slow Bail balls — Clarke's. 



Fast Bail balls — Wisden's. 



Medium pace — Lilly white's. 



Slow Shooters— Clarke's. 



Medium pace Shooters— Lillywhite's. 



A_^ 



Fast Shooters— Wisden's. 

to come is so much longer, that Clarke, in effect, is not 
so much slower, as he may appear. Lillywhite and 
Hillyer are of a medium kind ; having partly the quick- 
ness of Wisden's pace, and partly the advantage of 
Clarke's curved lines and far pitch. From this diagram 
it appears that" the slower the bowling the nearer it 
may be pitched up, and the less is the space the bat 
can cover forward ; also the more difficult is the ball 
to judge ; for the curved line of a dropping ball is very 
deceiving to the eye. 



168 THE CRICKET EIELD. 

In speaking of Clarke's bowling, men commonly im- 
ply that the slowness is its only difficulty. Now a ball 
cannot be more difficult for hand or eye because it 
moves slowly. No ; the slower the easier ; but the 
difficulty arises from the following qualities, wholly 
distinct from the slow pace, though certainly it is the 
slowness that renders these qualities possible : — 

1st. Clarke's lengths are more accurate. 

2dly. He can vary his pace unobserved, without 
varying his action or delivery. 

3dly. More of his balls would hit the wicket. 

4thly. A slow ball must be played : it will not play 
itself. 

5thly. Clarke can more readily take advantage of 
each man's weak point. 

6thly. Slow bowling admits of more bias. 

7thly. The length is more difficult to judge, owing 
to the curved lines. 

8thly. It requires the greatest accuracy in hitting. 
You must play at the ball with short, quick action 
where it actually is, and not by calculation of its rise, 
or where it will be. 

9thly. Slow balls can be pitched nearer to the bat, 
affording a shorter sight of the rise. 

lOthly. Catches and chances of stumping are more 
frequent, and less likely to be missed. 

llthly. The curved lines and the straightness pre- 
clude cutting, and render it dangerous to cross the ball 
in playing to leg. 



DIFFICULTY OF SLOW BOWLING. 167 

One artifice of Clarke, and of all good slow bowlers, 
is this : to begin with a ball or two which may easily be 
played back ; then, with a much higher toss and slower 
pace, as in the diagram, he pitches a little short of the 
usual spot. If the batsman's eye is deceived as to the 
distance, he at once plays forward to a length which is 
at all times dangerous ; and, as it rises higher, it makes 
the play more dangerous still. 

The difficulty of " going in " to such bowling as 
Clarke's, depends on this : 

The bat is only four inches and a quarter wide : call 
half that width two inches of wood. Then you can 
only have two inches to spare for the deviation of your 
hit ; therefore, if a ball turns about two inches while 
you are in the act of hitting, the truest hitter possible 
must miss. 

The obvious conclusion from these facts is : 

1st. That you can safely go in to such balls only 
as are straight, otherwise you cannot present a full bat ; 
and, only when you can step right up to the pitch of 
the ball, otherwise, by a twist, it will escape you ; and 
slow balls twist more than fast. 2ndly. You can only 
go in to such lengths as you can easily and steadily 
command ; a very long step, or any unusual hurry, will 
hardly be safe with only the said two inches of wood 
to spare. 

Now the question is, with what lengths, with such 
bowling as Clarke's, can you steadily and safely step 



168 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

in, as far as the pitch, with full command of hand and 
eye ? Remember you cannot begin your step till you 
can judge the length ; and this, with the curved line of 
. a slow dropping ball, you cannot judge till within 
a little of its grounding ; so the critical time for deci- 
sion and action is very brief, and, in that brief space, 
how far can you step secure of all optical illusions, for 
Clarke can deceive you by varying both the pace and 
the curve of his ball ? — Go and try. Again, when you 
have stepped in, where will you hit? On the ground, 
of course, and straight. And where are the men placed ? 
Besides, are you aware of the difficulty of interchanging 
the steady game with right foot in your ground, with that 
springy and spasmodic impulse that characterizes this 
" going in? " At a match at Lord's, in 1849, I saw 
Brockwell score some forty runs with many, hits off 
Clarke : he said to me, when he came out, " Clarke 
cannot bowl his best to me ; for sometimes I go in to 
the pitch of the ball when pitched well up, and hit her 
away ; at other times, I make a feint, and then stand 
back, and so Clarke gets off his bowling." He added, 
u the difficulty is to keep your temper, and not to go in 
with a wrong ball." This, I believe, is indeed a diffi- 
culty, — a much greater difficulty than is commonly 
imagined. My advice to all players who have not made 
a study of the art of going in, and have not fully sue* 
ceeded on practising days, is by no means to attempt it 
in a match. It is not so easy as it appears. You will 



STEPPING IN TO SLOW BALLS. 169 

find Clarke, or any good slow bowler, too much for you. 
" But supposing I should stand out of my ground, 
or start before the ball is out of the bowler's hand ? " 
Why, with an unpractised bowler, especially if in the 
constrained attitude of the overhand delivery, this 
manoeuvre has succeeded in producing threes and fours 
in rapid succession. But Clarke would pitch over your 
head, or send in a quick underhand ball a little wide, 
and you would be stumped ; and Wisden would prob- 
ably send a fast toss about the height of your shoulder, 
and, being prepared to play perfectly straight at the 
pitch, you would hardly raise your bat in time to keep 
a swift toss out of the wicket-keeper's hands. 
The difficulty of curvilinear bowling is this : 
1st. In making a catch every fieldsman finds that, 
in proportion as the ball has been hit up in the air, it 
is difficult to judge where to place himself. By the 
same law of sight, a fast ball that goes almost point- 
blank to its pitch, is far easier to judge than a slow 
ball that descends in a curve. 

2dly. As the slow ball reaches the ground at a 
greater angle, it must rise higher in a given space ; so, 
if the batsman misjudges the pitch of a slow ball by a 
foot, he will misjudge the rise to a greater extent than 
with a fast ball that rises less abruptly. Hence, play- 
ing forward is less easy with slow than with fast 
bowling. 

3dly. As to timing the ball, all the eye can discern 
15 



170 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

in a body moving directly towards it, is the angle with 
the ground : to see the curve of a dropping ball you 
must have a side view. The man at Point can see the 
curve clearly ; but not so the batsman. Consequently, 
the effect of the curve is left out in the calculation, and 
the exact time of the ball's approach is, to that extent, 
mistaken. Every one knows the difficulty of making a 
good half-volley hit off a slow ball, because the timing 
is so difficult : great speed without a curve is less 
puzzling to the eye than a curvilinear movement, how- 
ever slow. It were odd, indeed, if it were harder to 
hit a slow than a fast ball. No. It is the curve that 
makes difficult what of its pace alone would be easy. 
All forward play with slow bowling is beset with the 
same difficulty of allowing for the curve. And what 
style of play does this suggest? Why, precisely what 
Clarke has himself remarked, — namely, that to fix the 
right foot as for fast bowling, and play with long 
teach forward, does not answer. You must be quick 
on your feet, and, by short, quick action of the arms, 
hit the ball actually as it is, and not as you calculate it 
will be a second later. This is the system of men who 
play Clarke best ; of Pilch, of Dakin, of Hunt of Shef- 
field, and of C. Browne : though these men also dodge 
Clarke ; and, pretending sometimes to go out, deceive 
him into dropping short, and so play their heads 
against his. The best bowling is sometimes hit ; but 
I have not heard of any man who found it much easier 
to score off Clarke than off other good bowlers. 



SLOW BOWLING. ■ 171 

Again, as to cutting, or in any way crossing, these 
dropping or curvilinear balls. As a slow ball rises 
twice as much in a given space as a fast ball, of course 
the chances are greater that the bat will not cover the 
ball at the point at which, by anticipation, you cut. 
If you cut at a fast ball, the height of its rise is nearly 
uniform, and its course a straight line : so most men 
like very fast bowling, because, if the hand is quick 
enough, the judgment is not easily deceived, for the 
ball moves nearly in straight lines. But, in cutting or 
in crossing a slow ball, the height varies enough to 
produce a mistake before the bat can meet it. 

Once more, in playing at a ball after its rise, a safe 
and forcible hit can only be made in two ways. You 
must either meet the ball with full and straight bat, or 
cut horizontally across it. Now, as slow balls gene- 
rally rise too high for a hard hit with perpendicular 
bat, you are reduced generally to the difficulties of 
cutting or back play. Add to all this that the bias 
from the hand and from the inequalities of the ground 
is much greater, and also that a catch remains com- 
monly so long in the air that every fieldsman can cover 
double his usual quantity of ground, and then we shall 
cease to wonder that the best players cannot score fast 
off slow bowling. 



172 



CHAP. IX. 



In cricket wisdom Clarke is truly " Old : " what he 
has learnt from anybody, he learnt from Lambert. But 
he is a man who thinks for himself, and knows men and 
manners. " I beg your pardon, sir," he one day said 
to a gentleman taking guard, " but ain't you Harrow ? " 
— " Then we shan't want a man down there, '^ he said, 
addressing a fieldsman ; " stand for the ' Harrow drive/ 
between point and middle wicket." 

The time to see Clarke is the morning of a match. 
While others are practising, he walks round, with his 
hands under the flaps of his coat, reconnoitering his 
adversaries' wicket. 

* Before you bowl to a man, it is worth something 
to know what is running in his head. That gentleman," 
he will say, " is too fast on his feet, so, as good as 
ready money to me : if he does n't hit he can't score ; 
if he does, I shall have him." 

Going a little further, he sees a man lobbing to 
another, who is practising stepping in. " There, # sir, is 



Clarice's notions of bowling. 173 

6 practising to play Clarke,' that is very plain ; and a 
nice mess, you will see, he will make of it. Ah ! my 
friend, if you do go in at all, you must go in further 
than that, or my twist will beat you ; and going in to 
swipe round, eh ! Learn to run me down with a straight 
bat, and I will say something to you. But that 
would n't score quite fast enough for your notions. 
Going in to hit round is a tempting of Providence." 

" There, that man is pure stupid : alter the pace and 
height with a dropping ball, and I shall have no trouble 
with him. They think, sir, it is nothing but ' Clarke's 
vexatious pace : ' they know nothing about the curves. 
With fast bowling, you cannot have half my variety ; 
and when you have found out the weak point, where 's 
the fast bowler that can give the exact ball to hit it ? 
There is often no more head-work in fast bowling than 
there is in the catapult : without head-work, I should 
be hit out of the field." 

" A man is never more taken aback than when he 
prepares for one ball, and I bowl him the contrary one : 
there was Mr. Nameless, the first time he came to Not- 
tingham, full of fancies about playing me. The first 
ball he walked some yards out to meet me, and I pitched 
over his head, so near his wicket, that, thought I, that 
bird won't fight again. Next ball he was a little cun- 
ning, and made a feint of coming out, meaning, as I 
guessed, to stand back for a long hop ; so I pitched 
15* 



174 THE CBICKET FIELD. 

right up to him ; and he was so bent upon cutting me 
away, that he hit his own wicket down ! " 

Look at diagrams page 165. Clarke is there repre- 
sented as bowling two balls of different lengths ; but 
the increased height of the shorter pitched ball, by a 
natural ocular delusion, makes it appear as far pitched 
as the other. If the batsman is deceived in playing at 
both balls by the same forward play, he endangers his 
wicket. " See, there," continues Clarke, " that gentle- 
man's is a dodge, certainly, but not a new one, either. 
He does step in, it is true ; but, while hitting at the 
ball, he is so anxious about getting back again, that 
his position has all the. danger of stepping in, and none 
of its advantages." 

" Then there is Mr. ," naming a great man strug- 
gling with adversity. " He gives a jump up off his 
feet, and thinks he is stepping in, but comes flump 
down just where he was before." 

" Pilch plays me better than any one. But he knows 
better than to step in to every ball, or tcu stand fast 
every ball. He plays steadily, and discriminates, wait- 
ing till I give him a chance, and then makes the most 
of it." 

Bowling consists of two parts : there is the mechan- 
ical part, and the intellectual part. First, you want 
the hand to pitch where you please, and then the head 
to know where to pitch, according to the player. 



HINTS ON BOWLING. 175 

The first thing is to gain full command over the 
ball ; therefore, 

1. Practise bowling quite within your strength. If 
your strength and stature is little, your pace cannot be 
fast. Be contented with being rather a slow bowler. 
By commencing slowly, if any pace is in you, it will 
not be lost ; but, by commencing fast, you will spoil all. 

2. Practise, says Lillywhite, " both sides of the 
wicket. To change sides is highly useful w 7 hen the 
ground is worn, and it often proves puzzling to the 
batsman." 

3. Hold the ball in the fingers, not in the palm. If 
the tips of the fingers touch the seam of the ball, some 
bowlers find it assists in the spin. 

4. The essence of a good delivery is sending the ball 
forth rotating, or turning on its own axis. The more 
spin you give the ball, the better the delivery ; because 
then the ball will twist, rise quickly, or cut variously, 
the instant it touches the ground. 

5. This spin must not proceed from any conscious 
action of the fingers, but from some mechanical action 
of the arm and wrist. Clarke is not conscious of any 
attempt to make his ball spin or twist : a certain action 
has become habitual to him. He may endeavor to in- 
crease this tendency sometimes ; but no bowling could 
be uniform that depended so much on the nerves, or on 
such nice feeling as this attention to the fingers would 
involve. A bowler must acquire a certain mechanical 



176 THE CRICKET FIELD, 

swing, with measured steps and uniform action and 
carriage of the body. Still, at length, as with shoot- 
ing, hand and eye naturally go together. In rowing, 
if you look at your oar, you cut crabs. In skating, if 
you look at the ice and think of your steps, you lose 
the freedom and the flow of your circles. So, with bowl- 
ing, you must, of course, try experiments till you have 
decided on your steps and one mode of delivery, and 
then practise no other, and think more of the wicket 
than of your feet or your hand. 

6. Commence with a very low delivery. Cobbett, 
and others of the best bowlers, began underhand. The 
lower the hand, the more the spin, and the quicker the 
rise. Unfair or throwing bowlers never have a first- 
rate delivery. See how easy to play is a throw or a 
ball from a catapult ; and simply because the ball has 
th£h no spin. 

7. Practise a little and often. If you overfatigue the 
muscles, you spoil their tone for a time. Bowling, as 
we said of batting, must become a matter of habit ; and 
habits are formed by frequent repetition. Let the 
bowlers of Eton, Harrow, and Winchester, resolve to 
bowl if it be but a dozen balls every day, wet or fine. 
Intermission is very prejudicial. Also, never practise 
carelessly : always do your best, and always in the same 
form, lest you create a contrary habit. 

8. The difficulty is to pitch far enough. Commence, 
according to your strength, eighteen, or nineteen yards, 



HINTS ON BOWLING. 177 

and increase to twenty-two by degrees. Most amateurs 
bowl long hops. 

9. Seek accuracy more than speed : a man of fourteen 
stone is not to be imitated by a youth of eight stone. 
Many players like swift bowling, and why ? Because 
the length is easier to judge ; the lines are straighter 
for a cut ; the ball wants little accuracy of hitting ; fast 
bowlers very rarely pitch quite as far even as they 
might, for this requires much extra power ; fast balls 
twist less, and rarely increase their speed so much at 
the rise ; fast bowling gives fewer chances that the 
fieldsman can take advantage of, and admits generally 
of less variety ; fewer fast balls are pitched straight, 
and fewer even of those would hit the wicket. You 
may find a Redgate, a Wisden, or a Mynn, who can 
bring fast bowling under command for one or two 
seasons ; but they are exceptions so solitary as to make 
no precedent. Even these men were naturally of a fast 
pace : swiftness was not their chief object. So, study 
accurate bowling, and let speed come of itself. In 
speaking of an amateur, who took much kind interest 
in the play of one of the public schools, Clarke said he 
could not bear to see so many promising young players 
taught a wild style of bowling : it was nothing short 
of " cruelty to animals." 

So much for attaining the power of a bowler ; next 
to apply that power : 

1. Pitch as near the bat as you can without being hit 



178 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

away. The bowler's chance is to compel back play with 
the shortest possible sight of the rise. 

2. If three good balls have been stopped, the fourth 
is often destructive, because the batsman's patience is 
exhausted : so take pains with the fourth ball of the 
over. 

3. The straighter the ball, the more puzzling to 
the eye, and the more cramping to the hand of the 
batsman. 

4. Short-pitched balls are not only easier to hit, but 
have more scope for missing the wicket, though pitched 
straight. 

5. A free leg-hitter may often be put out by placing 
an extra man On side, and bowling repeatedly at leg- 
stump — only do not pitch very far up to him. Short- 
pitched leg-balls are the most difficult to hit, and 
produce most catches. By four or five attempts at leg- 
hitting, a man gains a tendency to swing round, and is 
off his straight play. 

6. Besides trying every variety of length, vary your 
pace to deceive the batsman in timing his play ; and 
practise the same action so as not to betray the change 
of pace. Also, try once or twice a high dropping 
ball. 

7. Learn to bowl tosses and tices. With a stiff 
player, before his eye is in, a toss often succeeds ; but 
especially practise high lobs — a most useful variety of 
ball. In most Elevens there are one or two men with 



HINTS ON BOWLING. 179 

whom good round-hand bowling is almost thrown away. 
A first-rate player in Warwickshire was found at fault 
with lobs : and till he learnt the secret?, all his fine play 
was at an end. 

8. Find out the furthest point to which your man can 
play forward safely, and pitch just beyond that point 
with every variety of pace and dropping balls. 

9. A good under-hand ball of two high curves — that 
is, a dropping ball rising high — is produced thus : — 
Run fast to deliver the ball, and toss it six or seven feet 
in the air : when it touches the ground, it will rise and 
come in faster than expected, from the impetus derived 
from the run. Such a ball, with a twist into leg- 
stump, and a third man to On side, is very effective, 
producing both catch and stumping. This is well worth 
trying, with four men to the On side, if some great gun 
is brought to win a country match. 

10. Most men have a length they cannot play. The 
fault of your.g bowlsrs is, they do not pitch far enough, 
and thus afford too long a sight of the ball. In the 
school matches and the university matches at Lord's, 
this is very observable, especially with fast bowlers. 

11. The old fashioned underhand lobbing, if gov- 
erned by a good head — dropping short when a man is 
coming out, and sometimes tossed higher and some- 
times lower, — is a valuable change in most Elevens ; 
but it must be high and accurately pitched, and must 
have head-work in it. Put long-stop upon the On 



180 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

side, and bring long-slip nearer in ; and be sure that 
your long-fields stand far away. 

12. Lastly, the last diagram explains that curvilineal 
bowling, the effect of a moderate pace and a spin, 
gives the batsman a shorter sight of- the rise than is 
possible with the straighter lines of swift bowling. A 
man has nearly as much time to make up his mind and 
prepare for Wisden as for Clarke, because he can judge 
Wisden's ball much sooner, and, though the rise is 
faster, it has further to come in. 

Theory or Bowling. — What characterizes a good 
delivery ? If two men bowl with equal force and pre- 
cision, why does the ball come in from the pitch so 
differently in respect of cutting, twisting, or abrupt 
rise? 

"Because one man gives the ball so much more 
rotatory motion on its own axis, or so much more spin 
than the other.' ' 

A throw, or the catapult which strikes the ball from 
its rest, gives no spin ; hence, the ball is regular in its 
rise, and easy to calculate. 

Cobbett gave a ball as much spin as possible : his 
fingers appeared wrapped round the ball : his wrist 
became horizontal : his hand thrown back at the 
delivery, and his fingers seemingly unglued joint by 
joint, till the ball quitted the tips of them last, just as 
you would spin a top. Cobbett's delivery designed a 
sp r n, and the ball at the pitch had new life in it. No 



THEORY OF BOWLING. 181 

bowling so fair, and with so little rough play or 
violence, ever proved more effective than Cobbett's. 
Hillyer is entitled to the same kind of praise. 

A spin is given by the fingers ; also by turning the 
hand over in delivering the ball. 

A good ball has two motions — one straight, from 
hand to pitch, the other on its own axis. 

The effect of a spin on its own axis is best exempli- 
fied by bowling a child's hoop. Throw it from you 
without any spin, and away it rolls ; but spin or 
revolve it against the line of its flight with great 
power, and the hoop no sooner touches the ground 
than it comes back to you. So great a degree of spin 
as this cannot possibly be given to a cricket ball ; but 
you see the same effect in the " draw-back stroke " at 
billiards. Revolve the hoop with less power, and it 
will rise abruptly from the ground and then continue 
its course — similar to that awkward and abrupt rise 
often seen in the bowling of Clarke among others. 

Thirdly, revolve the hoop as you bowl it, not against 
but in the line of its flight, and you will have its 
tendency to bound expended in an increased quickness 
forward. This exemplifies a low swimming ball, 
quickly cutting in and sometimes making a shooter. 
This is similar to the " following stroke " at billiards, 
made by striking tbe ball high and rotating it in the 
line of the stroke. 

Such are the effects of a ball spinning or rotating 

vertically. 

16 



182 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

Now try the effect of a spin from right to left, or left 
to right : try a side stroke at billiards ; the apparent 
angle of reflection is not equal to the angle of inci- 
dence. So a cricket ball, with lateral spin, will work 
from Leg to Off, or Off to Leg, according to the spin. 

But why does not the same delivery, as it gives the 
same kind of spin, always produce the same vertical or 
lateral effect on a ball ? In other words, how do you 
account for the fact that (apart from roughness of 
ground) the same delivery produces sometimes a con- 
trary twist ? " Because the ball may turn in the air, 
and the vertical spin become lateral. What was the 
under side may at the pitch be the upper, or the upper 
become under, or any modification of either may be 
produced in conjunction with inequality in the 
ground." 

With throwing bowling the ball comes from the ends 
of the ringers ; why, then, does it not spin ? Because, 
unlike Cobbett's delivery, as explained, wherein the 
ball left the fingers by degrees, and was sent spinning 
forth, the ball, in a throw, is held between ringers and 
thumb, which leave their hold at the same instant, 
without any tendency to rotate the ball. The fairer 
and more horizontal the delivery the more the fingers 
act, the more spin, and the more variety, after the 
pitch. A high and unfair delivery, it is true, is diffi- 
cult from the height of the rise ; otherwise it is too 
regular and easy to calculate, to make first-rate 
bowling. 



183 



CHAP. X. 



HINTS ON FIELDING. 



The essence of good fielding is to start before the ball 
is hit, and to pick up and return straight to the top of 
the bails by one continuous action. This was the old 
Wykehamist style — old, I hope not yet extinct, past 
revival ; — for, some twenty years since, the Wykeha- 
mist fielding was unrivalled by any school in England. 
Fifteen years ago, Mr. Ward and, severally and sepa- 
rately, Cobbett instanced a Winchester Eleven as the 
first fielding they had ever seen at Lord's. And among 
this chosen number were the yet remembered names of 
R. Price, F. B. Wright, Knatchbull, and Meyrick. 
These hardy Trojans — for the ball never came too fast 
for* them-— commenced fagging out long, very long, 
before they were indulged in batting, and were forced 
to qualify even for fagging, by practising till they could 
throw over a certain neighboring ban*; and were always 
in bodily fear of the pains and penalties of the middle 
stump if ever they missed a ball. But these days of 
the voluntary system are far less favorable for fielding. 
To become a good fieldsman requires persevering prac- 



184 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

tice, and a " big fellow " to fag for who will expect a 
little more smartness than is always developed by pure 
love of the game. 

And now Etonians, Harrovians, Wykehamists, I 
mention you alphabetically, a few words on training 
your Eleven for Lord's. Choose first your bowlers and 
wicket-keeper and long-stop ; these men you must 
have, though not worth a run : then, if you have any 
batsmen decidedly superior, you may choose them for 
their batting, though they happen not to be first-rate 
fieldsmen. But in most school Elevens, after naming 
four or five men, it is mere chance who scores among 
the other six or seven ; so let any great superiority 
in fielding decide the choice. I remember playing a 
match in which I had difficulty in carrying the election 
of a first-rate fieldsman against a second-rate bat. Now 
the said batsman could not certainly be worth above 
fourteen runs ; say seven more than the fieldsman. 
But the fieldsman, as it happened, made a most difficult 
catch, put one runner out, and, above all, kept the 
bowlers in good heart, during an up-hill game, by stop- 
ping many hard hits. A bad fieldsman is a loose screw 
in your machinery ; giving confidence to the adversary, 
and taking the spirit out of his own party. Therefore, 
let the captain of an Eleven proclaim that men must 
qualify by fine fielding : and let him encourage the 
following exercises : 

Put in two batsmen, whose play is not good enough 



TRAINING AN ELEVEN. 185 

to spoil, to tip and run. You will find what very clean 
fielding is required to save one run with men determined 
to try it. 

Let every man practise long-stop. 

Let the wicket-keeper take his place, and while some 
one throws or hits, let him require the quickest and 
most accurate throwing. A ball quickly thrown comes 
in like a dart — no time being lost high in air. At 
short distances throw at once to the hands ; at longer 
distances with a long hop. The hop should result 
from a low and skimming throw, or the ball will lose 
its speed. Practise throwing, without any flourish, by 
a single action of the arm. Any good fieldsman will 
explain, far better than our pen, the art of picking up 
a ball in the only position consistent with a quick 
return. A good throw often runs a man out ; an ad- 
vantage very rarely gained without something superior 
in fielding. Young players should practise throwing. 
The captain should keep an account of the best runners, 
throwers, clean pickers-up, and especially of men who 
can meet and anticipate the ball, and of those who 
deserve the praise given to Chatterton — " the safest pair 
of hands in England." 

So much for quick throwing ; but for a throw up 
from long field, Virgil had a good notion of picking up 
and sending in a ball : 

" Ille maim raptum trepida torquebat in hostem; 
Altior assurgens, et cursu -concitus, heros." 

16* JEn. xii. 901. 



186 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

Here we have snatching up the ball with a quiver of 
the wrist, rising with the effort, and a quick step or two 
to gain power. Meeting the ball requires a practice of 
its own, and is a charming operation when you can do 
it : for the same impetus with which you run in assists 
the quickness of your return. Practice will reveal the 
secret of running in ; only run with your hands near 
the ground, so as not to have suddenly to stoop ; and 
keep your eyes well open, not losing the ball for an 
instant. In fielding, as in batting, you must study all 
the varieties of balls, whether tices, half volleys, or 
other lengths. 

A fast runner nascitur non jit : still, practice does 
much, and especially for all the purposes of a fields- 
man near the wicket. A spring and quick start are 
things to learn ; and that both right and left : few men 
spring equally well with both feet. Anticipating the 
ball, and getting the momentum on the proper side, is 
everything in fielding ; and practice will enable a man 
to get his proper footing, and quick shifting step. A 
good cricketer, like a good skater, must have free use 
of both feet, and of course a fine fieldsman must catch 
with both hands. 

Practise left-handed catching in a ring ; also picking 
up with left: "Any one can catch with his right," says 
the old player ; " now, my boy, let us see what you 
can do with your left." Try, also, "slobbering" a 
ball, to see how many arts there are of recovering it 



THE SHORT RUN. 187 

afterwards. I need hardly say that jumping off your 
feet for a high catch, and rushing in to a ball and 
patting it up in the air and catching it the second 
attempt, are all arts of first-rate practitioners. 

Safe Hands. — Your hands should be on the rat-trap 
principle, — taking anything in, and letting nothing out 
again. Of course a ball has a peculiar feeling and spin 
off a bat quite different from a throw ; so practise 
accordingly. By habit hand and eye will go together : 
what the eye sees the right part of the hand will touch 
by a natural adjustment. There is a way of allowing 
for the spin of the ball in the air : as to its tendency 
at Cover, to twist especially to the left, this is too 
obvious to require notice. 

I am ashamed to be obliged to remind players, old 
as well as young, that there is such a thing as being a 
good judge of a short run : and I might hold up, as an 
example, an Honorable gentleman, who, though a first- 
rate long stop and fine style of batting, has a distinct 
reputation for the one run. It is a tale, perhaps, 
thrice told, but more than thrice forgotten, that the 
partner should follow up the ball ; how many batsmen 
destroy the very life of the game by standing still like 
an extra umpire ! Now, in a school Eleven, running 
matches can be practised with security, because with 
mutual dependence ; though I would warn good 
players that, among strangers in a country match, 
sharp running is a dangerous game. To lose single 



188 THE CRICKET EIELD. 

runs involves additional loss from the adversary stand- 
ing where he pleases. I have heard of a gentleman for 
years accounted a good long stop, till some men were 
put in against him to try his powers, — Clarke, I think, 
was one, — and they hurried him so much that, from 
that hour, he abdicated. 

Let old players keep up the habit of throwing and 
active movements. For the redundant spirit and 
buoyancy of youthful activity soon goes. Many a 
zealous cricketer loses his once famed quickness from 
mere disuse — Sic omnia fatis, in pejus mere. Instead 
of always batting and practising poor Hillyer and 
Wisden till their dodges are dodges no more, and it is 
little credit to score from them, go to your neighbor's 
wicket and practise fielding for an hour, or else next 
match your throwing will be at fault. 

Fielding, I fear, is retrograding : a good general 
player, famed for that quick return that runs the adver- 
sary out, and, at the same time, a useful change in 
bowling, — a judge of a run, and respectable at every 
point of the game : this is becoming a scarce character, 
and batting is a word supposed coextensive with 
cricket, — a sad mistake. 

Spare the bow:ler. — One reason for returning the 
ball, not to bowler, but to wicket-keeper, he should 
advance quietly and return slowly a catch. A swift 
throw, or any exertion in the field that hurts the 
bowler's hand, or sets it shaking, may lose a game. If 



SATING THE BOWLER. 189 

a bowler has half volleys returned to him, by stretch- 
ing and stooping after them, he gets out of his swing. 
Now this same swing is a great point with a bowler. 
Watch him after he has got his footsteps firm for his 
feet, and when in his regular stride, and . see the 
increased precision of his performance. Then comes 
the time when your great gun tumbles down his men : 
and that is the time that some sure judgmatic batsman, 
whose eminence is little seen amidst the loose hitting 
of a scratch match, comes calmly and, composedly to 
the wicket and makes a stand ; and, as he disposes of 
maiden overs, and steals ones and twos, he breaks the 
spell that bound his men, and makes the dead-straight 
bowling good for cuts and leg hits. In no game or 
sport do I ever witness half the satisfaction of the 
bowler who can thus bowl maiden overs and defy a 
score ; or of the batsman who takes the edge off the 
same, runs up the telegraph to even betting, and gives 
easier work and greater confidence to those who follow. 
A wicket-keeper, too, may dart off and save a bowler 
from fielding a three or four ; and, whenever he leaves 
his wicket, slip must take wicket-keeper's place : how 
stale ! true ; but, — instantly 's the word, — from neglect 
of which, we have seen dreadful mistakes made even in 
good matches. 

Ay, and what beautiful things are done by quick 
return and a low shy; no time wasted in parabolic 
curves : ball skimming the ground and coming in a 



190 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

long hop, but quickest of all returns (not safest) is a 
volley to the top of the bails into wicket-keeper's 
hands. 

Point. — Your great strength lies in anticipation: 
witness "Ava% dcvdytiv. To that gentleman every ball 
seems hit, because he always gets thereabouts ; yet is 
he near-sighted withal ! 'T is the mind that sees, eyes 
are its glasses, and he is too good a workman to want 
excuse for his tools. With slow bowling and bad 
batsman, Point can anticipate easily enough. Still, 
with all bowling, fast and slow, the common fault of 
point is, that he stands, if near, too near, and if far off, 
yet not far enough off. Stand where you yourself can 
catch and stop. If slow in hand and eye, stand off for 
longer catches, else, by standing where a quick man 
would catch sharp catches, you miss everything. With 
fast bowling, few balls that could be caught at seven 
yards ground short of twelve. Though, if the ground 
is very rough, or the bowling slow, the ball may be 
popped up near the bat, even by good players. When- 
ever a ball is hit off, point must cross instanter, or he'll 
be too late to back up, especially bowler's wicket. 

Point is sometimes Point proper, like a wicket- 
keeper or shortslip, to cramp the batsman, and take 
advantage of his mistakes ; but, with fast bowling and 
good batsmen, Point may advantageously stand off like 
any other fieldsman. For then he will save many more 
runs, and may make quite as many catches. If Mr. 



HINTS ON FIELDING. 191 

King stood as Point, and Chatterton as cover in the 
same line, with Pilch batting and Wisden bowling, 
they would not (as I presume they are well aware) 
work to the best advantage. When Clarke is bowling 
to one of twenty-two, the case is different; he wants a 
veritable Point for the catch. 

SHORTLEG'is often a very hardly used personage, ex- 
pected to save runs that seem easy, but are actual 
impossibilities. A good ball, perhaps, is pushed for- 
ward to middle wicket. On shortleg being square, 
then the bowler looks black, at him. Then a draw is 
made, when shortleg is standing sharp in forward, and 
no man is ubiquitous. If the batsman often does not 
know where the rise or bias may reflect the ball, how 
should the fieldsman know ? 

Covekpoint and Longseip are both difficult places ; 
the ball comes so fast and curling, that it puzzles even 
the best man. No place in the field but longstop has 
the work of longslip. This used to be Pilch's place. 

The chief point in these places is to stand either to 
save one or to save two. This depends on the quick- 
ness of the fieldsman and the judgment of the runners. 
With such judges of a run as Hon. F. Ponsonby, 
Pilch, or Clarke, you must stand rather near to save 
one ; but quick return is everything. Here Caldecourt 
was, years since, first-rate. I have seen him, when 
past his best, at Cover, judge well, start quick, run 
low, up and in like a shot to wicket-keeper's hands ; 



192 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

and what more would you have in fielding ? When E. 
H. Budd played and won a second match for 100Z. 
with Mr. Brande, — two fieldsmen given, — so much was 
thought of Mr. Brande's having engaged Caldecourt, 
that it was agreed he should field on both sides. He 
did so, and shied Mr. Budd out at a single stump. To 
save two, a good man may stand a very long way off 
on hard ground, and reduce the hardest cuts to singles. 
But a common fault is, " standing nowhere," neither 
to save one nor to save two. Remember not to stand 
as sharp when fast bowling is replaced by slow. Cover 
is the place for brilliant fielding. Watch well the 
batsman, and start in time. Half a spring in anticipa- 
tion puts you already under weigh, and makes yards in 
the ground you can cover. The following is curious : 

" You would think," said Caldecourt, " that a ball 
to the right hand may be returned more quickly than a 
ball to the left." But ask him, and he will show you 
how, if at a. long reach, he always found it otherwise. 
The right shoulder may be even in the better position 
to return (in spite of change of hands) when the left 
picks up the ball than when the right picks it. 

Some good Covers have been quicker with a hard 
jerk than a throw, for the attitude of fielding is less 
altered. Still, a jerk is less easy to the wicket-keeper. 
A longslip with good head and heels, may assist long- 
stop ; his triumph is to run a man out by anticipating 
the balls that bump off longstop's wrists and shins. 



HINTS ON FIELDING. 193 

A third man up, or a middle slip, is at times very 
killing : this lets longslip stand back for hard hits, and 
no catch escapes. A forward point, or middle wicket 
close in, often snaps up a catch or two, particularly 
when the ground is dangerous for forward play, or the 
batsman plays hesitatingly. 

Thick-soled shoes save colds in soppy weather, and 
do not jar when the ground is hard; for the Cantabs 
say that 

Thin soles + hard ground tender feet, 

is an undeniable equation. Bowlers should wear 
worsted socks to save blisters, and mind the thread is 
not fastened off in a knot just under the most sensitive 
part of the heel. 

Much inconvenience arises in a match, for the best 
player may be out by spectators standing in the eye of 
the ball ; so stretch strips of white canvas on poles five 
feet high, for, while it keeps the stupid away, it pro- 
vides a white back ground for each wicket. 

This is good also in a park, where the deep shade of 
trees increases the confessed uncertainty of the game. 
Some such plan is much wanted on all public grounds 
where the sixpenny freeholders stand and hug their 
portly corporations in, and give the ball all the shades 
of green coat, light waistcoat, and drop-smalls, by 
standing in the line of the wicket. Still, batsmen must 
try to rise superior to such annoyances ; for if the 
17 



194 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

bowler changes his side of the wicket, the umpire often 
is in the light of the ball. 

Oh ! that ring at Lord's ; for, as in olden time, — 

" si quid fricti ciceris probat et nucis emptor;" 

thai is, if the swillers of half-and-half and smokers of 
pigtail, — a preponderating influence and large majority 
of voices, — applaud a hit, it does not follow that it is a 
good one : nor, if they cry " Butterfingers ! " need the 
miss be a bad one. No credit for good intentions ! — 
no allowance for a twisting catch and the sun enough 
to singe your eyelids! — the hit that wins the "half- 
and-half" is the finest hit for that select assemblage, 
whose "sweet voices" quite drown the nicer judgment 
of the pavilion, even as vote by ballot would swamp 
the House of Lords. 

Longstof. — If you would estimate the value of a 
practised longstop, only try to play a match without 
one. Still, patient merit is rarely appreciated, for 
what is done very well looks so easy. Longstopping 
requires the cleanest handling and quickest return. 
The best in form I ever saw was an Oxonian about 
1838, — a Mr. Napier. One of the worst in form, how- 
ever, is the best of his day in practice, — Good ; for he 
takes the ball sideways. A left-handed man, like 
Good, has a great advantage in stopping slips under- 
leg. Old Beagley, among the ancients, was the man. 
But there is many a man whose praise is yet unsung ; 



HINTS FOR LONGSTOP. 195 

for when Mr. E. H. Budd saw Mr. R. Stodhert at 
Lansdown, Bath, stop right and left to Mr. Kirwan's 
bowling, he mentioned Beagley's doings, and said 
Beagley never came up to R. Stodhert. The gentle- 
man who opposed the firmest front, however, for years 
to Messrs. Kir wan and Fellowes,- — bowlers, who have 
broken studs into the breast-bone of a longstop, and 
then, to make amends, taken fourpenny-bits of skin off 
his shins, — is Mr. Hartopp, pronounced by Mr. Charles 
Burt, — himself undeniable at that point, — to be the 
best for a continuance he has ever seen. Vigeat vireat- 
que ! His form is good ; works with great ease and 
cool attention. Among the most celebrated at present 
are Mr. C. Ridding, Nat. Pilch, and Guy. 

One of the most practised longstops writes : " No 
place requires so much patient perseverance : the work 
is so mechanical. I have seen many a brilliant fields- 
man there for a short innings 'while the bowling is 
straight and rarely passes ; but let him have to hum- 
drum through 150 or 200 runs, and they get bored, 
tired, and careless, and runs come apace. Patience is 
much wanted if a sharp runner is in, for he will often 
try a longstop's temper by stealing runs ; then I have 
always found it the best plan to prepare the wicket- 
keeper for a hard throw to his, the nearer, wicket ; for 
if you do not run the man out, you frighten him down 
to steadier running. Throwing over does sometimes 
answer ; but a cunning runner will get in your way, or 



196 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

beat a ball thrown over his head. Longstop's distance 
must often be as much as four or five yards less for a 
good runner than a bad. Short distance does not 
make stopping more difficult because it gives fewer 
hops and twists to the ball ; but a longer distance 
enables you to cover more tips and draws, and saves 
legbyes. Good runners ought to cross if the ball is in 
the least fumbled; but clean fielding, with quick 
underhand return, would beat the Regent Street Pet 
himself did he attempt it. Longstop is wholly at fault 
if he requires the wicket-keeper to favor him : this 
would spoil the stumping. As to gloves and pads, let 
every one please himself; he must choose between 
gloves and sore hands ; but wrist gauntlets are of great 
use, and no hindrance to catches, which are usually 
spinning, and otherwise difficult. 

As to form, dropping on one knee is a bad position 
for any fielding : you are fixed and left behind by any 
sudden turn of the ball. The best rule is to watch the 
ball from the bowler's hand and move accordingly, and 
you will soon find how much bias to allow ; and beware 
of a slope like Lord's : it causes a greater deviation 
than you would imagine in thirty yards. Just as the 
ball comes, draw yourself up heels together (thus many 
a shooter have I stopped), and, picking as neatly as 
you can, pitch it back to wicket-keeper as if it were red 
hot. Quick return saves many byes, and keeps up an 
appearance which prevents the attempt. The same 



HINTS FOR LONGSTOP. 197 

discrimination of lengths is required with hands as with 
bat. Long hops are easy : a tice is as hard almost as a 
shooter ; half-volley is a teaser. Such balls as pitch 
up to you should be " played forward " by pushing or 
sweeping your hands out to meet them ; if you do not 
field them clean you will often save a run by forcing 
the ball up towards the wicket-keeper, or having it 
before you. 

A long stop wants much command of attention, — eye 
never off the ball ; and this, so little thought of, is the 
great secret of all fielding : also to play your hardest 
and your very best ; a habit which few men have 
energy to sustain. If you miss a ball, rattle away after 
it ; do not stand, as many do, to apologize by dumb 
show. If the ball bumps up at the moment of handling, 
throw your chin up and let it hit your chest as full as it 
may : this is Horace's advice. 

" Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus" 

Longstop should always back up on the On side, 
and must start at once to be in time. The attention he 
has to sustain is very trying to the eyes, especially in 
windy weather. 

Wicket-keeper. — If not born with better ocular 
nerves than the average, I doubt whether any degree of 
practice would make a first-rate wicket-keeper. To 
place the hands, right or left, accurately, according to 
the pitch of the ball, and to take that ball, however fast, 
17* 



198 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

unbaulked by the bat or body of the player, is really 
very difficult. But what, if we add, how few, very few, 
can accomplish it ! — taking the ball in spite of an unex- 
pected bias or turn from the bat. Still, practice will do 
much where nature has done a little ; but with modern 
bowling you want a man both " rough and ready." 
Mr. Jenner was the latter ; so also are Messrs. Anson, 
Nicholson, and Ridding and Box ; but Wenman was 
ready and rough too. He had fine working qualities, 
and could stand a deal of pounding, day after day : 
others have had a short life and a merry one, and more 
transient popularity. Chatterton fears no pace in bowl- 
ing. Lockyer's name, also, stands very high, and the 
All England Eleven experienced in one match the merit 
of Tinling as wicket-keeper as well as bowler. We 
leave these three to emulate Wenman, especially in 
his everyday lasting and working qualities against fast 
bowling, for that is the difficulty. Wenman did not 
stand too near, so was better placed for catches. More- 
over, Wenman had weight and power : a decided 
advantage, as, by fast bowling, you are shaken off your 
equilibrium. By the way, Burt an old wicket-keeper, 
was twenty stone, and Mr. Winterton, of Cambridge, 
not much less. This gives a great advantage over a 
player of the weight of Mr. Bidding: albeit, in the 
Players' Match, he stumped Hillyer off Mr. Followes's 
bowling, and that by a leg ball ! Hammond was the 
great wicket-keeper of former days : but then the 



WICKET-KEEPERS. 199 

bowling was often Clarke's pace. Browne, of Brighton, 
■and Osbaldestone put wicket-keepers to flight ; but the 
race re-appeared in the finest ever seen for moderate 
pace — Mr. Jenner, famed not only for the neatest stump- 
ing, but the marvellous quantity of ground he could 
cover, serving, as a near point, leg and slip, as well as 
wicket-keeper. Box's powers — -though he has always 
been a first-rate man — are rather limited to pace. 
" Have me to bowl," Lillywhite used to say, i4 Box to 
keep wicket, and Pilch to hit, and then you '11 see 
Cricket ; " for Box is best with Lillywhite. As to 
making mistakes as wicket-keeper, what mortal com- 
bination of flesh and blood can help it ? One of the 
most experienced long stops, after many years at Lord's 
and in the country, says, ih his experience to take one 
chance even out of three has proved good average 
wicket-keeping ; for think of leg-shooters, though Mr. 
Ridding takes even them wonderfully well. 

" I have seen," writes Mr. E. S. E. H., " Mr. C. 
Taylor — who was capital at running in, and rarely 
stumped out, having an excellent eye, and if the twist 
of the ball beat him, it was enough to beat the wicket- 
keeper also — I have seen him, after missing a ball, walk 
quietly back to his ground, poor wicket-keeper looking 
foolish and vexed at not stumping him, and the ring, 
of course, calling him a muff." Really wicket-keepers 
are hardly used ; the spectators little know that a 
twist that misses the bat may as easily escape the 
hand. 



200 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

Again, " the best piece of stumping I ever saw was 
done by Mr. Anson, in the Players' Match, in 1845. 
Butler, one of the finest of the Nottingham batsmen, in 
drawing one of Mr. Mynn's leg shooters, just lifted, 
for an instant, his right foot ; Mr. Anson timed the feat 
beautifully, and swept the ball with his left hand into 
the wicket. I fancy a feat so difficult was never done 
so easily." " I also saw Mr. Anson, in a match against 
the Etonians, stump a man with his right, catch the fly- 
ing bail with his left, and replace it so quickly that the 
man's surprise and puzzle made all the fun : stumped 
out, though wicket seemingly never down ! Mr. Jen- 
ner was very clever in these things, skimming off one 
bail with his little finger, ball in hand, and not troub- 
ling the umpire. Once his friend, Mr. R. K., had an 
awkward trick of pulling up his trousers, which lifted 
his leg every time he had missed a ball : Mr. Jenner 
waited for his accustomed habit, caught him in the act, 
and stumped him. A similar piece of fun happened in 
Gentlemen of England v. Gentlemen of Kent, in 1844." 
" A Kent player sat down to get wind after a run, his 
bat in his ground, but his seat of honor out, and for a 
moment let go the handle, and wicket-keeper stumped 
him out. He was very angry, and said he never would 
play again : however, he did play the return match at 
Canterbury, where he was put out in precisely the same 
manner. Since which, like Monsieur Tonson, he has 
never been heard of more." 



WICKET-KEEPEKS. 201 

That a fieldsman wants wits to his fingers' ends, 
was shown by Martingell one day : being just too far 
to command a ball, he gave it a touch to keep up, and 
cried, " Catch it, Slip." Slip, so assisted, reached the 
ball. 

The great thing in wicket-keeping is, for hand and 
eye to go together, just as with batting, and what is 
exercise for the former, assists the latter. Any exer- 
cise, in which the hand habitually tries to obey the eye, 
is useful for cricket ; fielding acts on batting, and bat- 
ting on fielding. A batsman had better practise wicket- 
keeping, or long-stopping, alternately with batting, 
than batting alone. 

" How do you explain, sir," said Cobbett, one day, 
standing with other professionals at Lord's, " that the 
player's batting keeps pace with the gentleman's, when 
we never take a bat except in a game? " Ci Because 
you are constantly following the ball with hand and eye 
together, which forms a valuable practice for judging 
pace, and time, and distance : not enough, certainly, to 
teach batting, but enough to keep it up. Besides, if 
you practise too little, — most gentlemen practise too 
much, ending in a kind of experimenting and specula- 
tive play, — that proves, like gentleman's farming, more 
scientific than profitable. They often try at too much, 
mix different styles, and, worse than all, form conflict- 
ing habits. The game, for an average, is the player's 
game, because less ambitious, with less excitement 



202 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

about favorite hits, simple style, with fewer things to 
think of, and a game in which, though limited, they are 
better grounded. 

Amateurs are apt to try a bigger game than they 
could safely play with twice their practice. Many a 
man, for instance, whose talent lies in defence, tries 
free hitting, and between the two proves good for noth- 
ing. Others, perhaps, can play straight and fairly off; 
and should not they learn to hit on, also ? Certainly : 
but, while in a transition state, they are not fit for the 
players' match : and some men are always in a transi- 
tion state. There is more orthodoxy — -that is, more of 
" Father's doxy " — in a young Caldecourt than in a 
young Etonian, and low-cricket notions of " private 
judgment " " lead many all abroad. " Horace had good 
cricket ideas, for, said he, 

" Autfamam sequere aut sibi convenientia jinge" 

either play for shew off, or adopt a style you can put 
well together — and sumite materiam — cequam viribus. 
You won't win by a hitting game if there is no hit in 
you. But cui lecta potenter erit res ; try at no more 
than you can do, — nee deserit hunc, — and that 's the 
game to carry you through. 

A mistake, said an experienced bowler, in giving a 
leg ball or two, is not all dead loss ; for a swing round 
to the leg often takes a man off his straight play. To 
ring the changes on cutting with horizontal bat, for- 



GENERAL ADVICE. ' 203 

* 

ward play with a straight bat, and leg hitting, which 
takes a different bat again, requires far more steady 
practice than mosrwho attempt it have either time or 
perseverance to learn so thoroughly as to prevent one 
movement from taking the place of the other. 



204 



CHAP. XL 

CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. MISCELLANEOUS. 

Let any man of common judgment see the velocity 
with which the ball flies from the bats of first-rate 
players, and how near the fieldsmen stand to the hitter ; 
and then let him feel and weigh a ball in his hand, and 
he would naturally expect to hear that every public 
cricket ground was in near connection with some cas- 
ualty hospital, so deceptive is a priori reasoning. 
William Beldham saw as much of cricket as any other 
man in England, from the year 1780 to about 1820. 
Mr. E. H. Budd and Caldecourt are the best of chroni- 
clers from the days of Beldham down to George Parr. 
Yet neither of these worthies could remember any 
injury at cricket, that would at all compare with the 
" moving accidents of flood and field " that have thinned 
the ranks of Nimrod, Hawker, or Isaac Walton. Fatal 
accidents in any legitimate game of cricket there have 
been none. There is a rumor of a boy at school, about 
fifteen years since, and another boy about twenty-five 
years ago, being severally killed by a blow on the head 



CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. 205 

with a ball : a dirty bo) r , also, of Salisbury town, in 
1826, having a bad habit of pocketing the balls of the 
pupils of Dr. RatclifFe's school, was hit rather hard on 
the head with a brass-tipped middle stump, and, by a 
strange coincidence, died of " excess of passion," as the 
jury found a few hours after. A man fell over the 
stumps but a short time since, and died of the injury 
sustained in the leg. But all this proves little as to 
the danger of the game. 

The most likely source of serious injury, and one 
which has caused alarm and shaken the nerves of not a 
few, is when a hitter, which is most rare, returns the 
ball, with all his force, straight back to the bowler. 
Caldecourt and the Rev. C. Wordsworth, than whom a 
more free and forcible hitter to every point of the field 
was never bred at Harrow, nor played at Winchester, 
severally and separately remarked in my hearing that 
they had shuddered at cricket once, each in the same 
position, and each from the same hitter. Each had a 
ball hit back to him by that powerful hitter, Colonel 
Kingscote, which whizzed, in defiance of hand or eye, 
most dangerously by. A similar hit we described from 
Hammond stepping in at the pitch, just missed Lord 
F. Beauclerk's head, and spoiled his nerve for bowling 
ever after. But what if these several balls had really 
hit ? who knows whether the skull might not have 
stood the shock, as in a case which I witnessed in Ox- 
ford, in 1835 ; when one Richard Blucher, a Cowley 
18 



206 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

bowler, was hit on the head by a clean half volley^ from 
the bat of Henry Daubeney — than whom few Wyke- 
hamists used (fuit! ) to hit with better eye or stronger 
arm. Still " Eichard was himself again, " for we saw 
a man, with his head tied up, bowling at shillings the 
very next day. Some skulls stand a great deal. Wit- 
ness the sprigs of Shillelah in Donybrooke fair ; still 
most indubitably tender is the face : as also — which 
horresco referens ; but here let me tell wicket-keepers, 
and longstops especially, _ that a cricket-jacket, made 
long and full, with pockets to hold a handkerchief suffi- 
ciently in front, is a precaution not to be despised, 
though " the race of inventive men " have also devised 
a cross-bar India rubber guard, aptly described in 
Achilles' threat to Thersites, in the first Iliad ; though 
I can truly say, like Bob Acres, at the sight of the 
doctor's implements, the sight of them " takes away my 
fighting stomach." 

The most alarming accident I ever saw occurred in 
one of the many matches played by the Lansdown Club 
against Mr. E. H. Budd's Eleven, at Purton, in 1835. 
Two of the Lansdown players were running between 
wickets ; and good Mr. Prout — immani corpore — was 
standing mid way, and hiding each from the other. 
Both rushing the same side of him, and one with his 
bat most dangerously extended, the point of which met 
his partner under the chin, forced back his head as if 
his neck were broken, and dashed him senseless to the 



A WYKEHAMIST RECOLLECTION. 207 

ground. Never shall I forget the shudder and the chill 
of every heart, till poor Price — for he it was — was lifted 
up — gradually evinced returning consciousness ; and, at 
length, when all was explained, he smiled, amidst his 
bewilderment, with his usual good-nature, on his 
unlucky friend. A surgeon, who witnessed the collis- 
ion, feared he was dead, and said, afterwards, that with 
less powerful muscles (for he had a neck like a bull- 
dog) he never could have stood the shock. Price told 
me next day that he felt as if a little more, and he 
never should have raised his head again. 

And what Wykehamist of 1820-30 does not remem- 
ber R Price ? or what Fellow of New College 

down to 1847 2 when 

" Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit" 

has not enjoyed his merriment in the Common Room, 
or his play on Bullingdon and Cowley Marsh ? His 
were the safest hands and most effective fielding ever 
seen. To attempt the one run from a cover hit when 
Price was there, or to give the sight of one stump to 
shy at, was a wicket lost. When his friend, F. B. 
Wright, or any one he could trust, was at the wicket, 
well backed up, the ball by the fine old Wykehamist 
action was up and in with such speed and precision as I 
have hardly seen equalled, and never exceded. When 
he came to Lord's, in 1825, with that Wykehamist 
Eleven which Mr. Ward so long remembered with 



208 THE CHICKET FIELD. 

delight, their play was unknown, and the bets on their 
opponents ; hut when once Price was seen practising at 
a single stump, his Eleven became the favorites immedi- 
ately ; for he was one of the straightest of all fast 
bowlers ; and I have heard experienced batsmen say, 
6 We don't care for his underhand bowling, only it is so 
straight we could take no liberties, and the first we 
missed was Out.' I never envied any man his sight 
and nerve like Price — the coolest practitioner you ever 
saw ; he always looked bright, though others blue : you 
had only to look at his sharp gray eyes, and you could 
at once account for the fact that one stump to shy at, a 
rook for a single bullet, or the ripple of a trout in a 
bushy stream, was so, much fun for R. Price. 

Some of the most painful accidents have been of the 
same kind — from collision ; therefore I never blame a 
man who, as the ball soars high in air, and the captain 
of his side does not (as he ought if he can) call out 
" Johnson has it ! " stops short, for fear of three spikes 
in his instep, or the buttons of his neighbor's jacket 
forcibly coinciding with his own. Still these are hardly 
the dangers of cricket : men may run their heads 
together in the street. 

The principal injuries sustained are in the fingers; 
though I did once know a gentleman who played in 
spectacles ; and seeing two balls in the air, caught at 
the shadow, and nearly had the substance in his 
face. The old players, in the days of under-hand 



CHANCES OF WAR. 209 

bowling, played without gloves ; and Bennett assured 
me lie had seen Tom Walker, before advancing civiliza- 
tion made man tender, rub his bleeding fingers in the 
dust. The old players could show finger- joints of most 
ungenteel dimensions ; and no wonder, for a finger has 
been broken even through tubular India rubber. Still, 
with a good pair of cricket gloves no man need think 
much about his fingers ; albeit flesh will blacken, joints 
will grow too large for the accustomed ring, and finger- 
nails will come off. A spinning ball is the most 
mischievous ; and when there is spin and space too, 
as with a ball from Mr. Fellows, which you can hear 
humming like a top, the danger is too great for mere 
amusement; for when, as in the Players' Match of 
1849, Hilly er plays a bowler a foot away from his 
stumps, and Pilch cannot face him, which is true when 
Mr. Fellows bowls on any but the smoothest ground, 
why then we will not say that any thing that hardest 
of hitters and thorough cricketers does is not cricket, 
but certainly it 's anything but play. 

Some of the worst injuries of the hands occur rather • 
in fielding than in batting. A fine player of the Kent 
Eleven, about three years ago, so far injured his thumb 
that the middle joint was removed, and he has rarely 
played since. Another of the best players of his day 
broke a bone in his hand in putting down a wicket : 
but, strangest of all, I saw a Christchurch man at Oxford 
fielding Cover split up his hand an inch in length 
18* 



210 THE CRICKET FIELD* 

between his second and third fingers ; but a celebrated 
university doctor of that day — yclept " Mercurialium 
custos virorum " — made all well in a few weeks, and in 
the same season a fine young fellow had a finger nail 
completely taken off in catching a ball. 

Add to all these chances of war, the many balls that 
are flying at the same time at Lord's and the Univer- 
versity, and other much frequented grounds, on a 
practising day. At Oxford, you may see, any day in 
the summer, on Cowley Marsh, two rows of six wickets 
each, facing each other, with a space of about sixty 
yards between each row, and ten between each wicket. 
Then you have twelve bowlers, clos a dos, and as 
many hitters— making twelve balls and twenty-four 
men, all in danger's way at once, besides bystanders. 
The most any one of these bowlers can do is to look 
out for the balls of his own set ; whether hit or not by 
a ball from behind is very much a matter of chance. 
A ball from the opposite row once touched my hair. 
The wonder is, that twelve balls should be flying in a 
small space for nearly every day ; yet I never heard of 
any man being hit in the face — a fact the more remark- 
able because there was usually free hitting and loose 
bowling. One day, at Lord's, just before the match 
bell rung after dinner, I saw one of the hardest hitters 
in the M. 0. C. actually trying how hard he could drive 
among the various clusters of sixpenny amateurs, every 
man thinking it fun, and no one dangerous. Certainly, 



HARD HITS. 211 

body-blows from a ball no man regards ; and as to legs, 
the calves, as an Irishman remarked, save the shins 
behind, and the hands before. An elderly gentleman 
cannot stand a bruise so well — -matter forms or bone 
exfoliates. But then, an elderly gentleman, bearing an 
inverse ratio in all things to him who calls him ' gov- 
ernor,' is the most careful thing in nature ; while young 
blood circulates too fast to be overtaken by half the ills 
that flesh is heir to. 

A well known Wykehamist player of ft. Price's 
standing, was lately playing as wicket-keeper, and 
seeing the batsman going to hit off, ran almost to the 
place of a near Point ; the hit, tremendously hard, 
glanced off from his forehead — he called out " Catch 
it," and it was caught by bowler ! He was not hurt — 
not even marked by the ball. 

Four was scored at Beckenham, 1850, by a hit that 
bounded off point's head ; but the player suffered 
much in this instance. 

A spot nnder the window of the tavern at Lord's 
was marked as the evidence of a famous hit by Mr. 
Budd, and when I played, Oxford v. Cambridge, in 
1836, a son of Lord F. Beauclerk, hitting above that 
spot, elicited the observation from the old players. 
Beagley hit a ball from his Lordship over a bank 120 
yards. Freemantle's famous hit was 130 yards in the 
air. Freemantle's bail was once hit up and fell back 
on the stump : Not out. A similar thing was wit- 



212 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

nessed by a friend on the Westminster Ground. " One 
hot day," said Bailey, " I saw a new stump bowled out 
of the perpendicular, but the bail stuck in the groove 
from the melting of the varnish in the sun, and the 
batsman continued his innings." I have seen Mr. 
Kir wan hit a bail thirty yards. A bail has flown forty 
yards. 

I once chopped hard down upon a shooter, and the 
ball went a foot away from my bat straight forward 
towards the bowler, and then, by its rotary motion, 
returned in the same straight line exactly, like the 
" draw-back stroke" at billiards, and shook the bail 
off. 

At a match played at Cambridge, a lost ball was 
found so firmly fixed on the point of a broken glass 
bottle in an ivied wall, that a new ball was necessary 
to continue the game. 

Among remarkable games of cricket, are games on 
the ice — as on Christchurch meadow, Oxford, in 1849, 
and other places. The one-armed and one-legged pen- 
sioners of Greenwich and Chelsea is an oft-repeated 
match. 

Mr. Trumper and his dog challenged and beat two 
players at single wicket in 1825, on Harefield common, 
near Rickmansworth. 

Matches of much interest have been played between 
members of the same family and some other club. 
Besides " the Twelve Cycsars," the three Messrs. 



SPIKES SAWDUST. 213 

Walker and the Messrs. Ridding have proved how 
cricket may run in a family, not to forget three of the 
House of Verulam, one of whom, especially, plays in 
as fine a style as any of the present day ; and, as to 
hard hitting, a second has, I am informed, hit over the 
Tennis Court. 

Pugilists have rarely been cricket players. " We 
used to see the fighting men," said Beldham, " playing 
skittles about the ground, but there were no players 
among them." Ned O'Neal was a pretty good player, 
and we did hear that Bendigo challenged George Parr ; 
but no one imputed it to any distrust in his own play 
that Parr declined that honor. Certainly, no man was 
ever famous both in the ring and at Lord's. 

In the famous Nottingham match, 1817, Bentley, on 
the All England side, was playing well, when he was 
given " run out," having run round his ground. 
"Why," said Beldham, "he had been home long 
enough to take a pinch of -snuff." They changed the 
umpire ; but the blunder lost the match. 

" Spiked shoes," said Beldham, " were not in use in 
my country. Never saw them till I went to Hamble- 
don." " Robinson began with spikes of a monstrous 
length," said old Mr. Moreton, the dramatist, on one 
foot. " The first notion of a leg guard I ever saw," said 
an old player, " was Robinson's : he put together two 
thin boards, angle-wise, on his right shin : the ball 
would go off it as clean as off the bat, but made a 



214 THE CRICKET FIELD. 






precious deal more noise : but it was laughed at — did 
not last long. Robinson burnt some of his fingers off 
when a child, and had the handle of his bat cut to suit 
the stumps. Still, he was a fine hitter. 

Barton mentioned to me a one-armed man who used 
a short bat in his right hand so well as to make a fair 
average score. 

Sawdust. — Beldham, Robinson, and Lambert, 
played Bennett, Fennex, and Lord F. Beauclerk, a 
notable single wicket match at Lord's, 27th June, 
1806. Lord Frederick's last innings was winning the 
game, and no chance of getting him out. His Lord- 
ship had then lately introduced sawdust when the 
ground was wet. Beldham, unseen, took up a lump of 
wet dirt and sawdust, and stuck it on the ball, which, 
pitching favorably, made an extraordinary twist, and 
took the wicket. This I heard separately from Beld- 
ham, Bennett, and also Fennex, who used to mention 
it as among the wonders of his long life. 

As to long scores, above one hundred in an 
innings rather lessens than adds to the interest of a 
game. 

The greatest number recorded, with overhand bowl- 
ing, was in M. C. C. v. Sussex, at Brighton, about 
1842; the four innings averaged 207 each. In 1815, 
Epsom v. Middlesex, at Lord's, scored first innings, 
476. Sussex v. Epsom, in 1817, scored 445 in one 
innings. Mr. Ward's great innings was 278, in M. C. 



HABD HITTING. 215 

C. v. Norfolk, 24th July, 1820, but with underhand 
bowling. Mr. Mynn's great innings at Leicester was 
in North v. South in 1836, South winning by 218 
runs. Mr. Mynn 21 (not out) and 125 (not out) and 
against Redgate's bowling. Wisden, Parr, and Pilch, 
have scored above 100 runs in one innings against 
good bowling. "Wisden once bowled ten wickets in 
one innings : Mr. Kirwan has done the same thing. 

Mr. Marcon, at Beckenham, 1850, bowled four men 
in four successive balls. The Lansdown Club, in 
1850, put the West Gloucestershire Club out for six 
runs, and of these only two were scored by hits — so 
ten ciphers! Eleven men last year (1850) were out 
for a run each, Mr. Felix being one. Mr. G. Yonge, 
playing against the Etonians, put a whole side out for 
six runs. A friend, playing the Shepton Mallet Club, 
put his adversaries in second innings for seven runs to 
tie, and got all out for five ! In a famous Wykehamist 
match all depended on an outsider's making two runs : 
he made a hard hit. When in the moment of exulta- 
tion, " Cut away, you young sinner," said a big 
fellow ; when lo ! down he laid his bat, and cut away 
to the tent ; while the other side, amidst screams of 
laughter at the mistake, put down the wicket and won 
the match. 

In a match at Oxford, in 1835, I* saw the two last 
wickets score 110 runs ; and in an I. Z. match at Leam- 
ington, the last wickets scored 80. 



216 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

As to HiKD hitting. " One of the longest hits in 
air of modern days," writes a friend, " was made at 
Slimley about three years since by Mr. Fellows, 
confessedly one of the hardest of all hitters. The same 
gentleman, in practice on the Leicester ground, hit, 
clean over the poplars, one hundred long paces from 
the wicket : the distance from bat to pitch of ball may 
be fairly stated as 140 yards. This was a longer hit, I 
think, than that at Slimley, which every one wondered 
at, though the former was off slow lobs in practice ; the 
latter in a match: Mr. Fellows also made so high a hit 
over the bowler's (Wisden's) head, that the second run 
was finished as the ball returned to earth ! He was 
afterwards caught by Armitage, Long-field On, when 
half through the second run. I have also seen, I think, 
Mr. G. Barker, of Trinity, hit a nine on Parker's Piece. 
It took three average throwers to throw it up. Mr. 
Bastard, of Trinity, hit a ten on the same ground. Sir 
F. Heygate, this year, hit an eight at Leicester." When 
Mr. Budd hit a nine at Woolwich, it proved a tie 
match : an eighth would have lost the game. Practise 
clean hitting, correct position, and judgment of lengths 
with free arm, and the ball is sure to go far enough. 
The habit of hitting at a ball oscillating from a slanting 
pole will greatly improve any unpractised hitter. The 
drummer boys practise the use of the cat on a dummy. 
The use of the bat, by a kind of " chamber practice " 
mentioned, may furnish us an exercise as good as 



CHOOSING AN ELEVEN. 217 

dumb bells, and, and far more interesting. A soft ball 
will answer the purpose, pierced and threaded on a 
string. % 

The most vexatious of all stupid things was done by 
James Broadbridge, in Sussex v. England, at Brighton, 
in 1827, one of the trial matches which excited such 
interest in the early days of overhand bowling. " We 
went in for 120 to win," said our good friend, Captain 
Cheslyn. " Now," I said, " my boys, let every man 
resolve on a steady game and the match is ours ; when, 
almost at the first set off, that stupid fellow Jim threw 
his bat a couple of yards at a ball too wide to reach, 
and Mr. Ward caught him at point ! The loss of this 
one man's innings was not all, for the men went in dis- 
gusted ; the quicksilver was up with the other side, and 
down with us, and the match was lost by twenty-four 
runs." But, though stupid in this instance, Broad- 
bridge was one of the most artful dodgers that ever 
handled a ball. And once he practised for some match 
till he appeared to all the bowlers about Lord's to have 
reduced batting to a certainty : but when the time came, 
amidst the most sanguine expectations of his friends, he 
made no runs. 

Mr. A. Bass reminds me that I have said little about 
generalship, a point in which I well might profit by his 
long experience. 

I agree with Mr. Bass that his old preceptor George 
19 



218 THE CKICKET FIELD. 

Owston's aim is of the greatest importance, — namely, 
to keep his man in good humor and good spirits. 

The first thing the manager has to do is to choose his 
Eleven ; and we have already hinted that fielding rather 
than batting is the qualification. A good field is sure 
to save runs, though the best batsman may not make 
any. When all are agreed on the bowlers, I would 
leave the bowlers to select such men as they can trust- 
Then in their secret conclave you will hear such principles 
of selection as these :— " King must be point, Chatterton 
we cannot afford to put cover unless you can ensure 
Wenman to keep wicket ; Good must be longstop : his 
left hand saves so many draws ; and I have not nerve to 
attack the leg stump as I ought to with any other man. 
We shall have three men at least against us whom we 
cannot reckon on bowling out ; so if at the short slip 
we have a Hillyer, and at leg such a man as Coates of 
Sheffield, we may pick these men up pretty easily." 
" But as to Sir Wormwood Scrubbs, old Sloley vows he 
shall never get any more pine apples and champagne for 
the ladies' days if we don't have him, and he is about 
our sixth bat." " Can 't be helped, for, what with his 
cigar and his bad temper, he will put us all wrong ; 
besides, we must have John Gingerley, whose only fault 
is chaffing, and these two men will never do together : 
then for middle wicket we have Young George." 
" Why, Edwards is quite as safe." " Yes, but not 
half as tractable. I would never bowl without George 



CHOOSING AN ELEVEN. 219 

if I could have him; his eye is always on me, and 
he will shift his place for every ball in the over, if I 
wish it. A handy man to put about in a moment 
just where you want him, is worth a great deal to a 
bowler. " 

" Then you leave out Kingsmill, Barker, and Cotes- 
worth ? Why, they can score better than most of the 
tail of the Eleven ! " 

" Yes ; on practising days, with loose play, but, with 
good men against them, what difference can there be 
between two men, when the first ripping ball levels both 
alike ?" 

When taking the field, good humor and confidence, 
is the thing. A general who expects everything 
smooth, in dealing with ten fallible fellow creatures, 
should be at once dismissed the service : he must 
always have some man he had rather change, as Virgil 
says of the bees — 

Semper erunt quarum mutari corpora malts ; 

but if you can have some four safe players, — 

Quatuor eximios prcestanti corpore — 

join your influence with theirs, ani lead them while 
you seem to consult them, and so keep up an appear- 
ance of working harmoniously together. Obviously 
two bowlers of different pace, like Clarke and Wisden, 
work well together, as also a left-handed and right- 



220 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

handed batsman, like Felix and Pilch, whom we have 
seen run up a hundred runs faster than ever before 
or since. 

Nunc dextrd ingeminans ictus , nunc ille sinistra* 

Never put in all your best men at first, and leave " a 
tail " to follow : many a game has been lost in this 
manner, for men lose confidence when all the best are 
out : add to this most men play better for the encour- 
agement that a good player often gives. And take care 
that you put good judges of a run in together. A good 
runner starts intuitively and by habit, where a bad 
judge, seeing no chance, hesitates and runs him out. 
If a good off hitter and a good leg hitter are in 
together, the same field that checks the one will give 
an opening to the other. 

Frequent change of bowlers, where two men are 
making runs, is good : but do not change good bowling 
for inferior, till it is hit, unless you know your bats- 
man is a dangerous man, only waiting till his eyes are 
open. 

With a fine forward player, a near middle wicket or 
forward point often snaps up a catch, and is worth try- 
ing as the man comes in ; otherwise, a third slip up can 
hardly be spared. 

If your wicket-keeper is not likely to stump any one, 
make a slip of him, provided you play a short leg ; 
otherwise he is wanted at the wicket for the single 
runs. 



COMMENTS ON LAWS. 221 

And if Point is no good as Point for a sharp catch, 
make a field of him. A bad Point will make more 
catches, and save more runs some yards back. Many 
a time have I seen both Point and wicket-keeper stand- 
ing where they were by use. The general must place 
his men not on any plan or theory, but where each par- 
ticular man's powers can be turned to the best account. 
We have already mentioned the common error of men 
standing too far to save one, and not as far as is com- 
patible with saving two. 

Bowlers are not always good judges of play : the 
general should observe how near the ball may be pitched 
to the batsmen respectively. Though, of course, it is 
a fatal error to worry the bowler by too many direc- 
tions. 

With a free hitter, a man who does not pitch very far 
up answers best : short leg balls are not easily hit. A 
lobbing bowler, with the longstop, and four men in all 
on the On side, will shorten the innings of many a 
reputed fine hitter. 

If a man will not play forward, pitch well up to him, 
and depend upon your slips. 

A good arrangement of your men, according to these 
principles, will make eleven men do the work of thir- 
teen. Some men play nervously at first they come in, 
so it is so much waste of your forces to lay your men 
far out, and equally a waste not to open your field as 
they begin to hit. 
19* 



222 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

We must conclude with comments on the Laws of the 
Game. 

I. The ball must weigh not less than five ounces and 
a half, nor exceed Rye ounces and three-quarters. It 
must measure not less than nine inches in circumfer- 
ence, nor more than nine inches and one quarter. 
Either party may call for a new ball at the beginning 
of each innings. — 

The secretaries of country clubs should order balls 
and cricket implements from the makers. Our friends 
may safely address Mr. Barton, Lord's, or 7 Connaught 
Terrace : he will judiciously select from the stores of 
Caldecourt, Dark, Lilly white, and others, and send 
choice articles of every kind. A bad ball will spoil 
any bats, and puzzle the bowler with its false weight. 
We once were playing a match with Mr. Budd, when, 
at the first feel of the ball, he called out, " we cannot 
play with this — a stone ball bought at a toy-shop." 
Shortly after, such a ball cut a new bat like a lump of 
lead, and damaged hands in the same proportion. 
Before the days of John Small, a ball would not last a 
match, through the stitches giving way. To " call for 
a new ball at the beginning of each innings " is not 
customary now. 

II. The bat must not be wider than four inches and 
a quarter in the widest part ; nor more than thirty-eight 
inches in length. — 

Here the length of the blade of the bat may be any- 



THE XAWS EXPLAINED. 223 

thing the player likes short of thirty-eight inches. As 
to the width, an iron frame was used in the old Ham- 
bledon Club as a gauge, in those primitive days when 
the Hampshire yeomen shaped out their own bats. 
This measure, we have said, was applied in the case of 
Robinson. As to the weight of the bat, 2 lb. 2 oz. is 
wood enough for a cutting and quick hitter ; only, very 
light bats rarely last long ; so, a good player must 
remember that it is the nature of bats to wear out. 

III. The stumps must be three in number ; twenty- 
seven inches above the ground ; the bails eight inches 
in length ; the stumps of equal and sufficient thickness 
to prevent the ball from passing through. 

The wicket has been of different sizes at different 
times, as represented in the following woodcut. In the 
year 1700, the runner was made out, not by striking 
off the transverse stump — we can hardly call it a bail — 
but by popping the ball in the hole herein represented. 

The measurement of the year 1817 is that now 
observed : at that time one inch was added to the 
height of the stumps, and two inches to the width 
between the creases. 

IV. The bowling crease must be in a line with the 
stumps; six feet eight inches long; the stumps in the 
centre ; with a return crease at each end at right angles 
towards the bowler. 

V. The popping crease must be four feet from the 
wicket, and parallel to it : unlimited in length, but not 
shorter than the bowling crease, — 



224 



THE CRICKET FIELD. 



1817 
1814 



1700 



I FT HIGH 



27 INCHES BY 8 
26 



FT BY 6 INCHES 



" Unlimited in length, but not shorter than the 
bowling crease." These words imply that the crease 
actually chalked out should be not shorter than the 
bowling crease, and unlimited in this sense, that it 
shall not be said the runner is out because he ran 
round his ground, for the popping crease is supposed 
to extend to the end of the field. 



THE LAWS EXPLAINED. 225 

The reason the bowling crease is limited, is because, 
otherwise, the batsman never could take guard ; and 
umpires should be very careful to call " No Ball," if 
the bowler bowls outside the return crease ; otherwise 
the best of batsmen might, undeservedly, lose his 
innings. 

The reason the return crease is not limited by law is, 
that it is against a batsman's own interest to run wide 
of his wicket : besides, a little latitude is requisite to 
prevent dangerous collision with the wicket-keeper. 

VI. The wickets must be pitched opposite to each 
other, by the umpires, at the distance of twenty-two 
yards. 

Secretaries should provide a rule or frame, consist- 
ing of two wooden measures, six feet eight inches long, 
and four feet apart, and perfectly parallel to each other. 
Then, if the chain of twenty-two yards be stretched 
from the extreme end of one bowling crease to the 
extreme end of the other, the wickets may easily be 
placed " opposite each other." 

VII. It is not lawful for either party, during a match, 
without consent, to alter the ground by rolling, water- 
ing, mowing, or beating. This rule is not meant to 
prevent the striker from beating the ground with his 
bat near the spot where he stands during the innings ; 
nor to prevent the bowler from filling up holes with 
sawdust, &c, when the ground is wet. 

VIII. After rain, the wickets may be changed with 
the consent of both parties. 



: 



226 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

IX. The bowler shall deliver the ball with one foot 
on the ground behind the bowling crease, and within 
the return crease, and shall bowl four balls before he 
change wickets, which he shall be permitted to do once 
only in the same innings. 

" One foot on the ground behind the return crease. " 
Sometimes a dispute arises as to whether the foot, 
though admitted " behind," was actually " on the 
ground." This is a nice point for the eye to decide, 
because you cannot look at the foot and the hand at th 
same moment. But Clarke observed to us, that no 
man can deliver a ball with the foot not touching the 
ground in the full swing of bowling : and, from experi- 
ment, we believe he is right. So, if the foot is over 
the crease, there is no doubt of its being on the 
ground. 

" Shall bowl four balls." When time is limited, it 
is not uncommon to agree on playing " six balls and 
over." Cobbett used to say, he could not take such 
pains for six balls as for four : it is usually found too 
fatiguing for fast bowlers. 

X. The ball must be bowled, not thrown or jerked, 
and the hand must not be above the shoulder in deliv- 
ery ; and whenever the bowler shall so closely infringe 
on this rule in either of the above particulars as to 
make it difficult for the umpire at the bowler's wicket 
to judge whether the ball has been delivered within the 
true intent and meaning of this rule or not, the umpire 
shall call, " no ball." 



COMMENTARY ON THE LAWS. 227 

" Not thrown or jerked : " here there is not a word 
about " touching the side with the arm," too commonly 
quoted as the criterion of a jerk. It is left to the 
umpire to decide what is a jerk. We once heard an 
umpire asked, how could you make out that to be a 
jerk ? "I say it is a jerk because it is a jerk," was 
the sensible reply. " I know a jerk when I see one, 
and I have a right to believe my eyes, though I cannot 
define wherein a jerk consists." 

In a jerk, there is a certain mechanical precision and 
curl of the ball wholly unlike fair bowling. 

A throw may be made in two ways ; one way with 
an arm nearly straight from first to last : this throw 
with straight arm requires the hand to be raised as 
high as the head, and brought down in a whirl or 
circle, the contrary foot being used as the pivot on 
which the body moves in the delivery. But the more 
common throw, under pretence of bowling, results 
from the hand being first bent on the fore-arm, and 
then power of delivery being gained by the sudden 
lash out and straightening of the elbow. It is a mis- 
take to say that the action of the wrist makes a throw. 

" The hand must not be above the shoulder in deliv- 
ery." David Harris used, before starting to bowl, to 
hold the ball high over his head, as if to gain freedom 
of arm. This the rule is not designed to prevent : but 
to plead that the hand that had gained its power above 
the shoulder is not " above the shoulder in delivery," 



228 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

because it had descended below the shoulder by the 
time the ball left the hand, this does appear too nice a 
distinction to be allowed. 

" In delivery " means some action so called : if the 
mere opening of the hand is delivery of the ball, then 
the only question is the height of the hand the moment 
it opens. But if, as we think, " delivery " compre- 
hends the last action of the arm that gives such open- 
ing of the hand effect, then in no part of that action 
may the hand be above the shoulder. 

Further, in case of doubt as to fair bowling, the 
umpire is to decide against the bowler ; so the hand 
must be clearly not above the shoulder, and the ball as 
clearly not thrown, nor jerked. 

Now, as to high delivery as a source of danger, we 
never yet witnessed that kind of high bowling that 
admitted of a dangerous increase of speed in an angry 
moment. The only bowling ever deemed dangerous, 
has been clearly below the shoulder, and savoring more 
of a jerk, or of an underhand sling, or throw, than of 
the round-armed or high delivery. Such bowlers were 
Mr. Osbaldestone, Browne, of Brighton, Mr. Kirwan, 
Mr. Fellowes, and Mr. Marcon, neither of whom, 
except on smooth ground, should we wish to encounter 
under the name of play. 

Still a high delivery, though not conducing to a 
dangerous pace and unlimited power, is plainly contrary 
to the law as now explained. 



COMMENTARY ON THE LAWS. 229 

But, we have often been asked, do the law and the 
practice coincide ? Is it not a fact that few round- 
armed bowlers are clearly below the shoulder ? Un- 
doubtedly this is the fact. The better the bowler, as 
we have already explained, the more horizontal and 
the fairer his delivery. Cobbett and Hillyer have 
eminently exemplified this principle ; but amongst 
amateurs and all but the most practised bowlers, 
allowing, of course, for some exceptions, the law is 
habitually infringed. In a country match a strict 
umpire would cry " no ball " to the bowlers on both 
sides, cramp their action, produce wide balls and loose 
bowling, and eventually, not to spoil the day's sport, 
the two parties would come to a compromise. And do 
such things ever happen ? Not often. Because the 
umpires exercise a degre of discretion, and the law in 
the country is often a dead letter. Practically, the 
10th law enables a fair umpire to prevent an undis- 
guised and dangerous throw ; but, at the same time, it 
enables an unfair umpire to put aside some promising 
player who is as fair as his neighbor's, but has not the 
same clique to support him. 

What, then, would we suggest? The difficulty is in 
the nature of the case. To leave all to the umpire's 
discretion would, as to fair bowling, increase those evils 
of partiality, and, instead of an uncertain standard, we 
should have no standard at all. With fair umpires the 
law does as well as many other laws as it is ; with 
20 



230 THE CBICKET FIELD. 

unfair umpires no form of words would mend the 
matter. I can never forget a remark of the late Mr. 
Ward : — " Cricketers. are a very peaceably disposed set 
of men. We play for the love of play ; the fairer the play 
the better we like it. Otherwise, so indefinite is the 
nature of round-arm bowling, that I never yet saw a 
match about which the discontented might not find a 
pretext for a wrangle." 

XI. He may require the striker at the wicket from 
which he is bowling to stand on that side of it which 
he may direct. 

Query. Can a bowler give guard for one side of 
the wicket and bowl the other? No law (though 
law XXXVI. may apply) plainly forbids it ; still, no 
gentleman would ever play with such a bowler another 
time. 

XII. If the bowler shall toss the ball over the 
striker's head, or bowl it so wide that, in the opinion 
of the umpire, it shall not be fairly within the reach of 
the batsman, he shall adjudge one run to the parties 
receiving the innings, either with or without an appeal, 
which shall be put down to the score of wide balls : 
such ball shall not be reckoned as one of the four 
balls ; but, if the batsman shall by any means bring 
himself within the reach of the ball, the run shall not 
be adjudged. 

As to wide balls, some think there should be a mark 
making the same ball wider to a man of six feet and to 



COMMENTARY ON THE LAWS. 231 

a man of five. With good umpires, the law is better 
as it is. Still, any parties can agree on a mark for 
wide balls, if they please, before they begin the game. 
" Bowl it so wide." These words say nothing about 
the ball pitching more or less straight and turning off 
afterwards : the distance of the ball when it passes the 
batsman is the point at issue. 

XIII. If the bowler deliver a no ball or a wide ball, 
the striker shall be allowed as many runs as he can 
get, and he shall not be put out except by running 
out. In the event of no run being obtained by any 
other means, then one run shall be added to the score 
of no balls or wide balls, as the case may be. All runs 
obtained for wide balls to be scored to wide balls. The 
names of the bowlers who bowl wide balls or no balls 
in future to be placed on the score, to show the parties 
of whose bowling either score is made. 

XIV. At the beginning of each innings the umpire 
shall call " play ; " from that time to the end of each 
innings no trial ball shall be allowed to any bowler. 

XV. The striker is out if either of the bails be 
bowled off, or if a stump be bowled out of the ground. 

XVI. Or, if the ball from the stroke of the bat, or 
hand, but not the wrist, be held before it touch the 
ground, although it be hugged to the body of the 
catcher. 

" Be held before it touch the ground." Query, is a 
ball caught rolling back off the tent out ? If the ball 



232 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

striking the tent is, by agreement, so many runs, then 
the ball is dead, and a man cannot therefore be out. 
Otherwise, I should reason that the tent, being on the 
ground, is as part of the ground. By the spirit of the 
law it is not out, by the letter out. But, to avoid the 
question, the better plan would be not to catch the 
ball, and disdain to win a match except by good play. 

XVII. Or, if in striking, or at any other time while 
the ball shall be in play, both his feet shall be over the 
popping crease, and his wicket put down, except his 
bat be grounded within it. 

XVIII. Or, if in striking at the ball, he hit down his 
wicket. — 

'" In striking," not in running a notch, however awk- 
wardly. 

XIX. Or, if under pretence of running, or other- 
wise, either of the strikers prevent a ball from being 
caught, the striker of the ball is out, — 

" Or otherwise ; " as, for instance, by calling out 
purposely to baulk the catcher. 

XX. Or, if the ball be struck, and he wilfully strike 
it again. — 

" Wilfully strike it again." This obviously means, 
when a man blocks a ball, and afterwards hits it away 
to make runs. A man may hit a ball out of his 
wicket, or block it hard. The umpire is sole judge of 
the striker's intention, whether to score or to guard. 

This law was, in one memorable instance, applied to 



COMMENTARY ON THE LAWS. 233 

the case of one Smith, a fine Nottingham player, who, 
in the match mentioned in page 88, as he was running 
a notch, hit the ball, to prevent it coming home to the 
wicket-keeper's hands. Clarke, who was then playing, 
thinks the player was properly given out. Certainly he 
deserved to be out ; but old laws do not always fit new 
offences, however flagrant. 

XXL Or, if in running, the wicket be struck down 
by a throw, or by the hand or arm (with ball in hand), 
before his bat (in hand) or some part of his person be 
grounded over the popping-crease. But if both the 
bails be off, a stump must be struck out of the ground." 

" With ball in hand." The same hand. 

" Bat (in hand) ; " that is, not thrown. 

XXIII. Or, if the striker touch, or take up the ball 
while in play, unless at the request of the opposite 
party. 

" If the striker touch." This applies to the Not- 
tingham case better than Law XX. ; but neither of 
these laws contemplated the exact offence. Lsst season 
a ball ran up a man's bat, and spun into the pocket of 
his jacket ; and, as he " touched " the ball to get it out 
of his pocket, was given out. The reply of Mr. Bell 
on the subject was, the player was out for touching 
the ball — he might have shaken it out of his pocket. 
This we mention for the curiosity of the occurrence. 

XXIV. Or, if with any part of his person he stop the 
ball, which, in the opinion of the umpire at the 

20* 



234 THE CRICKET EIELD. 

bowler's wicket, shall have been pitched in a straight 
line from it to the striker's wicket, and would have 
hit it. 

" With any part of his person." A man has been 
properly given out by stopping a ball with his arm 
below the elbow. Also a short man, who stooped to 
let the ball pass over his head, and was hit in the face, 
was once given out, as before wicket. 

" From it ; " that is, the ball must pitch in a line, 
not from the hand, but from wicket to wicket. 

Much has been said on this law. 

Clarke and others say that a round arm bowler can 
rarely hit the wicket at all with a ball not over-pitched, 
unless it pitch out of the line of the wickets. If this 
is true, a ball that has been pitched straight " would 
not have hit it ; " and a ball that " would have hit 
it," could not have been " pitched straight ; " and 
therefore it is argued the condition " in a straight line 
from it (the wicket)" should be altered to "in a 
straight line from the bowler's hand." In support of 
this theory, others have drawn a line from a round 
arm bowler's hand to off-stump ; and, observe, that 
the point in which that line enters into the line from 
wicket to wicket is too near for the pitch of a good 
ball. . . 

On the other hand, some scientific observers having 
their attention specially directed to this very question, 
say that it is a matter of positive experience, that a 



FAIR DELIVERY. 235 

round-arm bowler may pitch in the line of the wicket 
good length balls, and hit the wicket ; and infer that, 
therefore, the law is sound. 

The objection to adopting the line of the bowler's 
hand instead of the line of the wicket, is, that the 
umpire can actually see in the latter case, but in the 
former must guess. 

And what do we say ? 

Bring the matter to an issue thus : stretch a thin 
white string from leg-stump of striker's to off-stump of 
the bowler's wicket ; and let the facts carefully ob- 
served be the basis of future theories. The fact should 
be placed beyond all doubt ; some umpires give glaring 
cases of leg before wicket Not Out, in support of a 
theory that has been promulgated, that the two condi- 
tions of the law (" straight pitch," and " would have 
hit") cannot possibly be fulfilled. That they are some- 
times fulfilled we have no doubt : whether they are 
fulfilled as the rule, or only as the exception (as by a 
"break"), an experiment must decide. 

The following points have suggested many a refer- 
ence to Mr. Bell : 

1. Whether a man is out when his partner strikes a 
ball through his wicket, he being out of the ground ? — 
Not unless the ball touched the hand of one of the 
opposite party. 

2. Whether a ball hitting a tent or building, and 
bounding back into a player's hand, is a fair catch ? — 



236 THE CRICKET FIELD. 

Supposing a hit to the tent is allowed to be a certain 
score, without running, the ball touching it is dead, 
and cannot make a man out. Otherwise, me judice, 
touching the ground, or anything on the ground, is the 
same thing. The better plan is not to catch the ball, 
nor raise the question, but win by play instead of 
chance. 

Nothing is so unlike a good or fair player as to be 
continually asking questions of the umpire. 

One of the fairest retorts I ever heard was this : 

" How 's that, umpire ? " 

" Sir ! you know it is not out : so why ask me, if 
you mean fair play ? " 

"A LITTLE LEARNING IS A DANGEROUS THING " IN 
CRICKET. 

The only piece of science I ever hear on a cricket 
field is this : " Sir, how can that be ? The angle of 
reflection must always be equal to the angle of 
incidence." 

That a cricketer should have only one bit of science, 
and that, as he applies it, a blunder, is indeed a pity. 

I have already shown that, in bowling, the apparent 
angle of reflection is rendered unequal to the angle of 
incidence by the rotatory motion or spin of the ball, 
and also by the roughness of the ground. 

I have now to explain that this law is equally dis- 



A LITTLE LEARNING DANGEROUS. 237 

turbed in batting also ; and by attention to the follow- 
ing observations, many a forward player may learn so 
to adapt his force to the inclination of his bat as not to 
be caught out, even although (as often happens to a 
man's great surprise) he plays over the ball ! 

Ask, my friends, some Cantab to tell you a little 
about the composition and resolution of forces. Any 
senior opt. (within a year after he has taken his 
degree) will inform you that the effect of a moving 
body meeting another body moving, and that same 
body quiescent, is rather different. So — 

Fix a bat immovably perpendicular in the ground, 
and suppose a ball rises to it from the ground in an 
angle of 45° as the angle of incidence ; then supposing 
the ball to have no rotatory motion, it will be reflected 
at an equal angle. 

But supposing the bat is not fixed, but brought 
forcibly forward to meet the ball, then, according to 
the weight and force of the bat, the natural direction 
of the ball will be annihilated, and the ball returned, 
perhaps nearly point-blank, not in the line of reflection 
but in some other line more nearly resembling the line 
in which the bat is moved. 

If the bat were at rest, or only played very gently 
forward, the angles of reflection would not be mate- 
rially disturbed, but the ball would return to the 
ground in proportion nearly as it rose from it ; but by 
playing very hard forward, the batsman annihilates the 



238 THE CRICKET EIELD. 

natural downward tendency of the ball, and drives it 
forward, perhaps, into the bowler's hands ; and then, 
fancying the laws of gravitation have been suspended 
to spite him, he walks back disgusted to the pavilion, 
and says, " No man in England could help being out 
then. I was as clean over the ball as I could be, and 
yet it went away as a catch !" 

Lastly, as to " being out by luck," always consider 
whether, with the same adversaries, Pilch or Parr 
would have been so put out. Our opinion is, that 
could you combine the experience and science of Pilch 
with the hand and eye of Parr, luck would be reduced 
to an infinitesimal quantity. 

That cricket is partly a game of chance there can be 
no doubt ; but that all is chance that men call such, we 
strenuously deny. Young players should not think of 
being out by chance : there is a certain intuitive 
adaptation of play to circumstances, that, however 
seemingly impossible, will result from observation and 
experience, unless the idea of chance closes the eyes to 
instruction. 

With these hints, we bid our brother cricketers 
adieu ; assuring them that we are ourselves by no 
means too old to learn ; that all information will be 
thankfully received ; and requesting, in the words of 
Horace, — 

" si quid novisti rectius istis 

Candidus imperti ; si non, his utere mecum." 

THE END. 

31+77-2 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 237 026 3 



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